Survey questions to test competitiveness

It's probably better to see if any validated indexes/tests exist, and some do e.g. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0013164492052002016

  Despite its relevance to a wide variety of situations, competitiveness is a personality characteristic that has not been widely studied. Although some research in need for achievement, sports psychology, experimental social psychology, and personality assessment has approached the topic of competitiveness, few studies have provided a clear definition of the construct or a psychometrically-sound way of measuring it. This paper clarifies the conceptual definition of competitiveness and introduces a 20-item scale called the Competitiveness Index. Study 1 focuses on the validity and reliability of the measure; Study 2 reports the results of an exploratory factor analysis of the Competitiveness Index which yielded three factors: (a) Emotion, (b) Argument, and (c) Games.

But it's 1990's paper with only ~100 citations or so, so not a blockbuster. You should also look at which papers cite it, to see if anything better has been developed.

Also I found a follow-up/companion paper by same reserch group, published nearly at the same time as the previous paper (this one has fewer citations) https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(92)90030-S

  Little research has been devoted to the study of competitiveness as a personality trait. The Competitiveness Index (CI), developed by Smither and Houston (in press, Educational and Psychological Measurement), is a 20-item structured personality instrument that responds to this problem. This study explored the validity of the CI by investigating both the internal and external validity of the measure. The CI was completed by 255 subjects (158 nurses and 97 attorneys). A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the stability of the CI's factor structure across different population samples. In addition, a logistic discriminant analysis was performed to evaluate the CI's ability to differentiate between individuals in a competitive occupation (attorney) and a less competitive occupation (staff nurse). The results provide support for both the internal and external validity of the CI. The findings from the confirmatory factor analysis indicate that the factor structure of the CI is consistent across different population samples. The results of the discriminant analysis demonstrate that the CI can differentiate between individuals in more and less competitive occupations. Future research directions and possible applications of the CI are discussed.

And if need something briefer, a much more recent paper (2012) citing the previously mentioned work did this:

  Competitiveness. To measure competitiveness, we modified the competitiveness index
  scale suggested by Houston and colleagues (see Houston, Farese, & La Du, 1992; Smither &
  Houston, 1992) so that we could capture state competitive mindset. The scale included the
  following items: 1) Right now, I think that competing against an opponent would be enjoyable
  and 2) Right now, I think that keeping score is important when playing games. The two items
  were correlated at r=.73, p<.001, which corresponds to $\alpha$=.84 (M=4.95, SD=1.42).


Does society swing back and forth from one extreme to the other?

Short answer: This question does not have a sociological or other scientific answer because it cannot be studied empirically as currently conceived, but it is a valid question all the same. It may still be possible for a humanistic field of study, such as History, to provide a satisfying answer.

Long answer: There is currently no way to define what or how any observable variables might map on to "society," "oppression" or "exploitation" in a sufficiently specific sense. Because we cannot operationalize what exactly change in society over time means, or whether society's current state is an "extreme" in a way we can systematically observe and record, we cannot give scientific evidence (sociological or otherwise) one way or the other.

Therefore, depending on which and how many variables we choose as our measure of society's change over time, and how long we choose to study them for, we may find that society does oscillate between extremes, or that it doesn't, or that it goes through periods of oscillating and not oscillating, or that some parts of society do oscillate while other don't, or a virtually infinite set of other conceivable models.

With no way to distinguish the relative likelihood of different models using empirical evidence, we have no credible scientific reason to believe any of them are more likely than any other, and hence no ground on which to base potential scientific theories on. Colloquially speaking, we cannot theorize about evidence we don't know how to collect.

Concluding remarks

I am providing a negative answer to this question because it is the top result on Google for its title, because it has survived my close vote, because I answered the author's directly related question, "How can we realize when a sociological question is impossible to answer?" and, last but not least, because I like bounties.


What are your thoughts on Accelerated Resolution Therapy?

My concern is that there are many therapies being broadly promoted without sufficient evidence of effectiveness and this one is calling itself 'evidence-based". I worry that time and resources are being invested and that clients are being promised amazing, if not unbelievable, benefits. Clients may not be sophisticated consumers and I would hate for them to be misled by such inflated claims. I believe that we have a duty to be skeptical before jumping on board the 'next best thing' bandwagon. After all, much harm has been done in the past by advocates of sham therapies (think 'the schizophrenogenic' mother and Bateson's 'double bind' theory of schizophrenia and therapies endorsed by Jay Haley et al).

Taken directly from the ART website:

"Accelerated Resolution Therapy  is a form of psychotherapy with roots in existing evidence-based therapies but shown to achieve benefits much more rapidly (usually within 1-5 sessions). Clients with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, sexual abuse and many other mental and physical conditions can experience remarkable benefits starting in the first session."

It is surprising to me that this treatment - 'Accelerated Resolution Therapy' (ART) would even be recognized by SAMHSA [https://nrepp.samhsa.gov/ProgramProfile.aspx?id=7#hide4] as an evidence-based treatment. The data on ART is limited to 1 small sample RCT in which ART was compared to an attentional placebo, not a credible alternative treatment. Standards promulgated by APA Divison 12 based on Chambless and Hollon (1998, p.8) require at least two well controlled studies be conducted- (one ideally independent of the original investigators)

"As is the case in research in general, replication is critical,
particularly replication by an independent investigatory team.
The requirement of replication helps to protect the field from
drawing erroneous conclusions based on one aberrant finding.
Replication by an independent team of investigators also provides
some protection against investigator bias or reliance on
findings that prove unique to a particular setting or group of
therapists. Thus, only when a treatment has been found efficacious
in at least two studies by independent research teams do
we consider its efficacy to have been established and label it
an efficacious treatment [highlighting added]. If there is only one study supporting
a treatment's efficacy, or if all of the research has been conducted
by one team, we consider the findings promising but
would label such treatments as possibly efficacious, pending
replication." (p.8)

As noted in the single RCT manuscript (Kip et al., 2013) itself:

"A limitation is that the ART intervention was not compared to an active psychotherapy regimen, such as PE. Thus, no direct comparison of treatment efficacy of ART versus current firstline treatments (PE, CPT, and EMDR) can be made. Second, by design, the AC group was not parallel in contact hours to the ART intervention. " (p.1307)

This is pretty limited evidence on which to promote a new treatment. It was also surprising to me that:

the 'intervention' itself  can be delivered delivered in as little as 2-5 60-75 minute sessions [as little as 120 minutes of an active intervention!]; and
the training and supervision of clinicians was limited as follows: "Clinicians were trained in ART over 2 days using the ART manual and supervised practice."

It is even more baffling that this intervention could be so highly effective with complex clients who have PTSD and multiple comorbid disorders. Here's what the ART website says:

Clients with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, sexual abuse and many other mental and physical conditions can experience remarkable benefits starting in the first session. (highlighting added)

"In ART, the eye movements are thought to be conducive to sorting out problems quickly through increasing the integration of activities in the left and right sides of the brain. These movements also seem to help the client process information by producing a deep feeling of relaxation. Yet ART is not hypnosis. and

Importantly, clients do not even have talk about their traumas or difficult life experiences with the therapist to achieve recovery.

[downloaded from http://acceleratedresolutiontherapy.com/.]

Does this seem like a reasonable explanation of a therapeutic mechanism to you?

Given the fact that this was a small sample RCT compared against a non-credible attentional placebo, how do we know that these findings are not simply the result of positive investigator/clinician expectancies and essentially a placebo effect unrelated to any of the hypothesized mechanisms of treatment?

It is so attractive to belief that there are fast, easy and extremely effective treatments that require virtually no training or supervision vs. well-established treatments that are so difficult to master and deliver with fidelity and require intensive training and supervision [in the VA, clinicians might achieve competency in CBT if they complete a 3 day workshop combined with at least six months of weekly 90 minute supervision sessions on cases  with bi-weekly submissions of tapes rated on the CTS.].

I did find the material on the ART website rather disturbing in terms of inflated claims of efficacy with testimonials from individuals to the effect that 1 hour of ART fully resolved their longstanding complex psychological problems when no previous therapies had been effective. If I made these types of claims on my website I would be in violation of the APA ethics code.

I do have a personal 'iron in the fire' in the sense that I devote a lot of my time to training and supervising clinicians in CBT and it is a difficult , resource intensive and time consuming process to achieve competency as a CBT clinician, let alone to be able to treat highly complex patients with co-occurring illness. In my own daily therapy practice I try to adhere closely to good CBT practices and I strive to improve my efforts with results that periodically fall short of my high expectations.

I look forward to seeing additional data on ART and it would be absolutely wonderful if additional studies-- controlled trials where ART is compared to a credible alternative therapy (CPT or PE) confirm these initial findings-- because this would be wonderful for patients.

In the meantime, I worry that we are investing our time chasing mirages instead of investing in and delivering established effective evidence-based treatments to our patients.


What is the purpose of non-spiking and anaxonic neurons?

The standard textbook neuron receives input at its dendritic tree, fires action potentials and has a single, long output axon to send the message off to distant locations.

However, non-spiking, anaxonic neurons are not a rarity; in various sensory systems there are bipolar cells present that lack a clearly defined axon and are non-spiking, such as the amacrine cells and the horizontal cells in the vertebrate retina (Fig. 1.) and the granule cells in the mammalian olfactory bulb (Hisada, 1989).

Generally, non-spiking neurons work as analogue integrators. Where a spiking neuron can only transmit a spike, or no spike (binary signal), a non-spiking neuron can convey an infinitesimal number of membrane voltages instead. Hence, it is well suited to integrate the input from various other neurons. Amacrine cells and horizontal cells lack clearly defined axonic elements and are thus non-spiking anaxonic neurons. Their dendrites, however, do form synapses with other neurons, generally on their dendrites too, forming dendro-dendritic connections. The function of the bipolar cells in the vertebrate retina are unclear.

There are other non-spiking anaxonic neurons identified. A notable example are the interneurons seen in the ganglia of the motor systems of various arthropods, including crayfish, locusts and cockroaches. Here, they are coupled to neurons that convey descending output to motoneurons, and they are thought to be involved in selecting the adequate information to be gated to the motoneurons (Takahata et al., 1981), or to be necessary for generating oscillations in the system (Pearson & Fourtner, 1975). But again, their exact functions are unclear. One reason why may be because they are local circuit neurons. In other words, they do not send their signals far off to distant locations because they lack clear axons. For example, the role of the retinal ganglion cells becomes readily apparent when you sever their long axons that are bundled in the optic nerve (one becomes blind in that eye).

Fig. 1. Retinal circuitry showing the non-spiking, anaxonic horizontal and bipolar cells. Source: David Hubel's Eye, Brain, and Vision

References
- Hisada, Arch Histol Cytol (1989); 52(Suppl): 139-46
- Pearson & Fourtner, J Neurophysiol (1975); 38(1): 33-52
- Takahata et al., Brain Res; 226: 309-14


What are threshold symptoms and sub-threshold symptoms?

I believe that the concept of 'subthreashold symptoms' refers to a situation where a client clearly presents with symptoms of a given condition but, crucially, they present with too few symptoms to meet the diagnostic criteria.

This link, which hopefully also satisfies Seanny123's request for a document, states:

  Although DSM-IV acknowledged the clinical significance of some subthreshold forms of unipolar depression, such as minor depression (MinD) and recurrent brief depression (RBD), clinicians continued to struggle with the concept of "subthreshold" depression. A substantial number of patients continued to present with depressive symptoms that still did not satisfy any DSM-IV diagnosis. Generally, these patients failed to complain of anhedonia and depressed mood, a criterion that DSM-IV mandates for any diagnosis of depression.


What is the current state of SAD treatment according to research?

Coming from the North, I'm most familiar with light treatments, where patients get on a regular schedule exposing themselves to a bright light every day.  Folklore in the North is that it needs to have high reds and blues like the spectrum of the sun;  I haven't read the papers in detail, so I don't know if that's true, but light therapy has been effective in small trials:

Preliminary studies in 11 patients suggest that extending the photoperiod with bright artificial light has an antidepressant effect.

Both morning and evening light therapy improved depressive symptoms in patients (of 30) with SAD independent of their circadian phase or sleep timing.

Several patients (of 13) were able to maintain the antidepressant response throughout the winter months by continuing daily light treatments.


Is there a developmental purpose to adolescent transgressions?

The function of rebellion is to challenge conclusions reached by previous generations.

If the conclusions of each generation were not challenged, errors in judgment would be perpetuated, leading to larger and larger errors in subsequent generations as each successive generation built upon the false conclusions of the previous generations.

This can be observed in technological and entrepreneurial "disruptions", in which rebels (entrepreneurs) gain competitive advantages by challenging established assumptions about the market, or "conventional wisdom," and generate creative solutions that serve as more than just clones  of established business models. (PayPal, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Uber, and perhaps even Tesla could be said to have profited from this disruptive, creative paradigm.)

Adolescents transgress for many reasons, but important to remember is that they often do so not in directed pursuit of goals, but rather to explore the possibility space and establish their sense of self-determination. Later, as goal-attainment becomes important, individuals who have explored larger spaces have larger bodies of experience upon which to draw, from which they can generate creative solutions.

I have no academic sources for these assertions. They are simply observations of learning patterns that I have seen others exploit, and thus learned to exploit myself.


What is the difference between a schema and a heuristic?

A heuristic consists of preferences that help you decide in a situation where you do not have enough information or do not care enough to make an informed decision. For example, when you want to buy yoghurt, but are no nutritionist, you might decide on which yoghurt you buy by the familiarity of the brand name (you prefer the familiar, this is called the familiarity heuristic) and other aspects that have nothing to do with the yoghurt itself.

A schema is a workflow or storyboard that tells you what to do in a recurring situation. For example, when you go shopping you might follow an internal script to make shopping more efficient: you pick the same products in the same sequence every time. You know in advance what you will buy, there are no decisions involved, in fact you ignore all alternative products. A schema allows you to navigate familiar, recurrent and similar situations by following the same sequence of actions.


What cognitively interesting event-related potentials at FP1, FP2, TP9 or TP10 can be measured with consumer-grade EEG hardware?

I don't have experience with consumer grade EEG,  but at fp1 and fp2 you should be able to measure the P3a response. Given the high impedance you will need a lot of trials,  but the response is typically seen at fp1 and fp2 in research.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168559798000331

For the Tp sites they are a bit posterior but you may be able to pick up the T complex.  Typically this response is measured at more anterior sites.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1388245703000051


First I have to say that the wavelengths of light are on a totally different order of magnitude than sound. So the parallel drawn in your question "do light waves, for example one with the same wave length as a mid-C and another with a mid-F wave, look nicely together?" may seem logical, but is on closer inspection not easily maintained. Instead, one way to address this question more appropriately would be to talk about wavelength differences; i.e., light with wavelengths differing X octaves compared to acoustic tones differing X octaves.

Having said that I think it is worthwhile to sidestep the theoretical approach and take a closer look at how auditory and visual sensory information is actually processed at a neurophysiological level.

Sound is processed in the inner ear (the cochlea), which basically works as a Fourier transformer, and specifically a frequency-to-place converter. The spatial distribution of the characteristic frequencies (the tonotopy) on the basilar membrane of the cochlea follows a pattern where one octave spans about 2.5 mm (Greenwood, 1990). For the approximately 10 octaves the human ear can hear (~20 Hz - 20 kHz) we have 16,000 inner hair cells. See the following picture for a rolled-out cochlea with the tonotopy illustrated:

source: what-when-how.com

The eye, on the other hand, analyzes light frequencies using just 3 colors (red, green, blue) by means of three cone classes (as opposed to 16,000 hair cells each sensitive to a slightly different acoustic frequency). Although the visual system does a great job in combining this sparse frequency information into a spectrum of colors, it is not a frequency analyzer as such. In fact, it is more of a frequency "combiner", as it combines the ratios of activation of the cone classes and runs it through a system of color opponency. By weighing the relative contributions of the three colors (RGB) using the opponent system (R-G, Y-B) the visual system estimates the color of the object you are looking at. Below on the left is illustrated the spectral frequency sensitivity of the three cone classes (note the unequal, non-octave distribution of the three across the dynamic spectrum range), and on the right the color-opponent (Hering) model.

source:huevaluechroma.com and giantitp.com

The opponent nature of human vision (blue-yellow and red-green axis) results in a 2-dimensional color space which is very different from the 1-dimensional frequency space of the cochlea (Mather, 2006). Note that the third visual dimension is brightness, comparable to the second dimension of loudness in the ear.

In all, based on a neurophysiological signal-processing point-of-view, hearing and seeing frequencies are two completely different things. Comparing octaves between the two is worse than comparing apples and oranges, as apples and oranges share at least the same dimensionality.

It probably doesn't answer the question, but it may answer the question why it cannot be answered in any logical, comprehensive and straightforward way without loosing oneself in subjective monologues about "I like this and this combination of timbres but I don't like this color combination so much" kind-of-thing. Admittedly, it can be experimentally addressed by inquiring about the subjective 'pleasantness' of a set of combinations of colors and pitches in a study population. But from a physical and pysiological perspective, comparing the two entities of light and sound through equal-octave comparisons doesn't make sense since: (1) the two entities are processed through completely different neurophysiological principles as described above, ('1D acoustic frequency Fourier analyzer' versus '2D spectral combiner'), and (2) they represent entirely different physical entities altogether (photons/EM waves versus air pressure differences). Their only commonality is that they have an oscillatory nature, but that's where the parallel starts, and ends.

References
Greenwood et al. JASA 1990; 87:2592-605
Mather. Foundations of Perception 2006


Do people with Asperger syndrome have two left brains?

Most neuroscientists have dropped the right brain-left brain differentiation because cross-over of functions at multiple levels is now so widely recognized. So your understanding of two left brains is not current (if it ever was).


Why does splitting attention between a primary task and another task appear to improve performance on the primary task?

Dual Task research

In general, I think a lot depends on what is the secondary task and how it relates to the primary task (see human multitasking).
In general, secondary tasks tend to lower performance on the primary task.

A classic combinations where there may be facilitation is music with gross motor tasks, where the music is often experienced as motivating.
In other cases, music can serve to block out other external distractions, such as in a noisy office.

However, in general, it would be unusual for task performance to be improved by simultaneously watching television while doing the task. It might make the task more enjoyable, but it would be rare for it to improve productivity. The intrusive way that TV impinges on your attention would generally interfere with flow and focus on the primary task, especially where the primary task involves cognitive control.

Incubation

That said, there is a literature on the benefits of breaks and incubation on problem solving. So, in general, taking a break after working on a task intensely and getting stuck, can be a useful way of breaking the impasse. In particular, a good night sleep can be particularly helpful.

Motivation

Another way of framing your question is in terms of the effect of a secondary task on motivation and persistence. Making the task more enjoyable might have an effect on your persistence.

However, drawing on the expertise literature, I'd say it's often better to work in a focussed and concentrated way for a shorter period of time, than to do a task in a half hearted way for a longer period of time. If you've truly lost the ability to concentrate, then it may be time to rest and recuperate, both in terms of good sleep and time off task.


Can you become "mentally" bilingual after 8?

Anecdotally speaking yes, I moved to another country where I couldn't practice my native one and after some years I started thinking in the once foreign one. I am now back to my original country and the process is playing out in reverse with some interesting quirks, I translate words rather than retrieve the original ones, something that at one point I did in the foreign language.

Strictly speaking, my understanding of how speech and language works in the context of thinking, is that word selection is heavily influenced by both internal and external cues, ( this goes in line with how memory and conditioning work), further, models of speech generation ( both internal and external) support the idea of a general store of meaning (semantic meaning, syntactic rules,cadence,etc) generally dispersed around the NC and more locally near speech producing areas and a separate but heavily connected speech generating system (lateral sulcus: Wernicke- Broca Area).

While speaking a foreign language, working memory areas are conceivably recruited ( this is my speculation ) to translate and then produce speech, something that takes a perceivable time and is noticed by native speakers and sometimes the speaker.

With time and due to plasticity, foreign speech networks get strengthened to the point of not needing any more translation and both internal (what you might call thinking) and external speech are more efficiently generated.

Native speech networks can also face extinction due to the competing foreign language and disuse, but thankfully are still available ( what was once learned is easier to re-learn) so retaking or even thinking in both languages is possible.

As for age, there is a marked advantage of being young due to known efficiencies that happen earlier in life as well as possibly being primed for foreign languages. Still,due to how plastic the brain is even into adulthood, you can become mentally bilingual at practically any age but at a different rate.

Sources:

Kemmerer, D. (2014). Cognitive neuroscience of language. Psychology Press.
Gluck, M. A., Mercado, E., & Myers, C. E. (2013). Learning and memory: From brain to behavior. Palgrave Macmillan.


What is the correlation between Grade Point Average (GPA) and intelligence?

Assessing Adolescent And Adult Intelligence (Kaufman & Lichtenberger, 2005) goes through quite a bit of the research on this.  Or you can use the correlation of 0.7 that they report, which is based on an aggregation of more recent studies of adult intelligent test scores and academic achievement.  I don't see where they break down country, but they do look at level of schooling a bit.  Perhaps some of their sources will help.


Why do we prefer visually aligned objects?

One of the main reasons related to the 'Gestalt principles'

Law of Proximity Objects near each other tend to be grouped together.
Law of Similarity Similar items tend to be grouped together.
Law of Closure Objects grouped together are seen as a whole.
Law of Continuity Lines are seen as following the smoothest path.
Law of Common Region Items in similar areas tend to be grouped
together.
Law of Connectedness Items that are connected are seen as groups.

This is a nice summary from the article referenced below:

  Coupling emotional and behavioral triggers in some form of cognitive grouping — whether by proximity, similarity or something else — strengthens the motivation to act on the behavioral cue.

I'd add to this: We feel more comfortable when perceiving something expected. When something breaks this (such as misalignment), it causes stress because there is a gap between our expectations (as the principles outline) and our experience.

References

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/08/strengthening-behavioral-cues-in-ux-web-design-with-gestalt-principles/
http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm


To what category of optical illusions does this image belong?

This appears to be a modified Hering illusion or rather it seems to rely on the same principle:

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License: Wikipedia 2018.

  There are several possible explanations for why perceptual distortion
  produced by the radiating pattern. The illusion was ascribed by Hering
  to an overestimation of the angle made at the points of intersection.
  If true, then the straightness of the parallel lines yields to that of
  the radiating lines, implying that there is a hierarchical ordering
  among components of such illusion. Others have suggested that angle
  overestimation results from lateral inhibition in visual cortex,
  while others have postulated a bias inherent in extrapolating 3D angle
  information from 2D projections.

The modification in the case of your example with the radiant part being at the corner where the vertical rises from the tip of the left hand parallel line.

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

That being said, see Ames room illusion for comparison of a superficially similar setup.


What is the psychological effect of wearing black clothes?

This question is studied within the fields of color psychology and enclothed cognition (e.g., Adam and Galinsky, 2012), currently a hot/controversial topic in cognitive science. Without addressing the substantial questions surrounding the premises of these interpretations for situated/embodied cognition in my answer, it seems that wearing black is associated with aggressive behavior and the tendency to be perceived as more aggressive (Frank and Gilovich, 1988).

  An analysis of the penalty records of the [U.S.] National Football League and the [U.S.] National Hockey League indicate that teams with black uniforms in both sports ranked near the top of their leagues in penalties throughout the period of study. On those occasions when a team switched from nonblack to black uniforms, the switch was accompanied by an immediate increase in penalties. The results of two laboratory experiments indicate that this finding can be attributed to both social perception and self-perception processes—that is, to the biased judgments of referees and to the
  increased aggressiveness of the players themselves.

As per Artem's comment to the question, we need to be skeptical of inferring a causal relation when so many confounding factors, such as culture, could potentially be in play. A 2014 review of color psychology in the Annual Review of Psychology journal concluded that while there is mounting evidence for the influence of color on behavior, it is ultimately too early to theorize strongly on specific color psychological questions such as this (Elliot and Maier, 2014).

  The review clearly shows that color can carry important meaning and can have an important impact on people's affect, cognition, and behavior. The literature remains at a nascent stage of development, however, and we note that considerable work on boundary conditions, moderators, and real-world generalizability is needed before strong conceptual statements and recommendations for application are warranted.

References

Adam, H., & Galinsky, A. D. (2012). Enclothed cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 918-925.
Elliot, A. J., & Maier, M. A. (2014). Color psychology: Effects of perceiving color on psychological functioning in humans. Annual review of psychology, 65, 95-120.
Frank, M. G., & Gilovich, T. (1988). The Dark Side of Self-and Social Perception: Black Uniforms and Aggression in Professional Sports. Journal of Pereonality and Social Psychology, 54(1), 74-85.


Yes and no.

Neural networks that use edge weights simulate synaptic plasticity - a key mechanism in the brain operation. But it isn't the only one.

In practice, cognition is the combination of various mechanisms, some we are still unsure of.

Perhaps the most obvious missing ingredient of weighted networks is the lack of frequency/time domains similar to that affecting the brain. Neurons involve time-dependent operation - for instance, both the action potential and the following refractory period are time-bound. The brain also involves synchrony, e.g. the phase-locked discharges of a neuron set.

There're also issues like different axon lengths that play a part. And many more.

In addition, and possibly above all, the actual topography matters a great deal - how everything is connected.

More advance brain simulations involve many of these extra components - mimicking more accurately a real biological brain.


What do you call sensations without stimuli?

Short answer
Visual hallucinations and, more specifically, phosphenes are the terms you are probably after.

Background
I'll basically provide a list of terminologies below, as your question seems to indicate you're walking on unfamiliar grounds with your research.

For a starters, sensations refer to the peripheral detection of stimuli. Perceptions are the higher cognitive, central correlate of those sensations involving the conscious awareness of them.
The sparks or flashes you're talking about may be caused peripherally (sensation level), but likely find their origins centrally (perceptual). This, because people with low-vision, or blind people lacking functional photoreceptors in their retinae can experience them too, and sometimes in exaggerated and pathological forms.
The visual field shifts are most likely caused by eye movements, unless you can provide solid sources to back up your thoughts that it can happen without eye movements. Likely, nystagmus or related involuntary eye movements are involved, which can be exaggerated by some physical conditions, again including blindness.
Now, as my knowledge is restricted to visual impairments, I can say that spontaneous spots of light are not sensations, but hallucinations. A hallucination being "...a sensory experience, possessing the compelling sense of reality of a true perception, but occurring without external stimulation of the relevant sensory organ. Specifically, they are elementary visual hallucinations, as opposed to complex visual hallucinations. An example of the latter is the Charles Bonnet Syndrome, where blind folks experience complex visual scenes, including faces.
Back to your question on elementary visual hallucinations, they are referred to as phosphenes, photopsiae, or unformed visual hallucinations, Typically they consist of colored or colorless bright lights, such as points, flashes, stars, and sparks. To provide some context to these terms: Phosphenes are generally used to describe benign phenomena, as well as for stimuli evoked by electrical stimulation of the retina or other visual centers (forget about the latter for the sake of simplicity, as these are not hallucinations anymore). Photospsias are generally used in the literature associated with retinal disease. Unformed hallucinations, personally, I've never encountered in my field of research, but the linked article below gives it as a last option, so I simply included it here too.

Reference
- Menen et al (2003), Survey of Ophthalmology; 48(1): 58–72


How do neurons decide how to alter their output signals?

This will be a long post. FYI.

To my knowledge, there is no evidence for back propagation in the brain. If you're interested specifically in that topic, Geoffrey Hinton (Dept. of CS @ UofT) has written about it. I'll try to focus on the biology.

Some basic neurophysiology first. Neurons have a slightly negative electrical resting potential (prototypically ~-70 mV). When they fire (following depolarization) this increases. As you may guess, they can also hyperpolarize (less potential to fire an impulse). As you may also be able to guess, other neurons in the network can influence one another to make them more or less likely to fire. This, and indeed most, neuron-neuron communication occurs at synapses. A synapse is a small gap between the presynaptic neuron and postsynaptic neuron, as you're likely already aware. Respectively, these correspond to an axon (sending a signal) and a dendrite (receiving a signal). Long story short, when depolarized the presynaptic neuron releases neurotransmitters (NT) which are received by the post synaptic neuron. This results in changes in concentration of ions in the postsynaptic neuron (inside vs. outside of the neuron). This can result in the postsynaptic neuron firing itself. The  ions primarily implicated in this are Sodium (Na+) and Potassium (K+), transduced though ion specific Na+ and K+ ion channels in neuronal membranes.

One of the most critical ions related to your question, however, is Calcium (specifically, Ca2+). This ion often acts as an intracellular messenger, that is when it is 'let into' the cell after that neuron receives an impulse, it activates biochemical processes inside the neuron, e.g., to produce more of a protein.

How neurons actually learn has been a difficult problem to model. We know that neurons can potentate, that is a neuron can come to exert more control over the firing of another neuron. Indeed, it has been known for a long time that firing neurons strengthen connections. The famous aphorism for this is "neurons that fire together, wire together" (coined by the brilliant scientist Carla Shatz, now at Stanford). The problem is that if neurons just kept getting stronger, it leaves no room for information to be 'unlearned', which it is obvious it can be, for new information to be added to the system, or, indeed, information to ever be really learned at all. You'll see why in a moment.

One attempt to model the problem of neuronal learning is Beinenstock Cooper and Munro (BCM) Theory. Its basic proposition is that a connection that was once weak can become strong (and vica versa).
Specifically, what it attempts to model can be thought of as follows:

Imagine we have three stimuli (e.g., red, green, blue) and three cells. Before much exposure, all of these neurons respond ~equally to each of the stimuli (colors). After exposure the neurons respond differentially, that is neuron 1 might respond strongest to red; neuron 2 to green; and neuron 3 to blue. We might call this 'learning' because we wittness an increase in responding to a stimuli but also -- and this is critical -- a decrease in responding to other stimuli.

Biologically, one heavily implicated mechanism in this process is the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR). Following binding of glutamate (a NT), this receptor allows Ca2+ into the postsynaptic cell. This animates intracellular events that result in either potentiation (typically in the form of Long Term Potnetation [LTP]) or depression (typically in the form of Long Term Depression [LTD]). In short, an increase or decrease a presynaptic neurons' ability to exert control over the postsynaptic neuron.

In simple terms:

> When low amounts of Ca2+ are conducted through the NMDAR --> LTD
> When hight amounts of Ca2+ are conducted through the NMDAR --> LTP

Critically, there is a modification threshold. This is the point at which LTD turns into LTP. This is represented by the greek letter theta (θ). BCM theory proposes a shifting threshold. If a synapse gets very strong, then θ shifts such that it becomes difficult to strengthen the connection further and easier to weaken it. Likewise, if a synapse becomes very depressed, θ will shift to allow it to more easily become potentiated and harder to weaken it.

For example, graphically you can visualize potentiation as the threshold shifting to the right. That is, the amount of Ca2+ that would have produced potentiation, now produces depression. The reverse, obviously, can also happen.

As you can see, what we've arrived at is something that looks rather computational. While I am not aware of a truly precise mathematical description of this process, it is obvious that such a description is, in principle, possible. You can see the math. proposed currently here (it seems implausible it could be that simple to me...and the assumptions made seem daft, but that's just my own commentary).
There are precise models of neuronal potentials and people are trying to put BCM (or something like it) into very precise terms. As you can image, this is extremely difficult because of the complexity of the biology, especially what Ca2+ is actually doing in the cell. In many ways, that is still a black box although we're learning about it at a very rapid rate.

In closing, biology seems to have solved the problem of learning very differently than computer scientists. As someone with both a mathematics and neuroscience background, I find the fact that this is possible to be simply incredible.


is Lewin's field theory still used in modern psychology? If yes, what are its applications?

I've come across Lewin's theory of organisational change a lot. It is often presented in introductory courses on organisational behavior, I/O psychology, and organisational change. It is a three stage theory that talks about unfreezing, making a change, and refreezing.


Are there any systems in the brain that are responsible for monitoring energy

This is a very broad question. I'll simplify greatly.

Like most systems, the brain regulates it's moment-to-moment energy needs through control of it's vascular supply. While the vascular supply (to the heart and brain) is regulated (by both baroreceptors and other) to protect against decreased blood flow (that is, the heart and the brain will be preferentially protected against decreased blood flow), the day-to-day energy need fluctuations are still met by brain parenchymal vasodilation/vasoconstriction, often mediated by ion concentration in response to CO2 levels, etc. There are a host of local and peripheral vasodilators. The most instantaneous of these are a result of Ca++ and K+.

  The matching of blood flow to regional brain function, called functional hyperemia or neurovascular coupling, involves the coordinated activity of neurons, astrocytes, and parenchymal arterioles. Under physiological conditions, localized neuronal activation leads to elevated astrocyte endfoot Ca(2+) and vasodilation, resulting in an increase in cerebral blood flow. (see also Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 May 22;109(21):E1387-95. for Ca2+-activated K+ (BK) channels.).

The simplest answer to your question of how the energy needs are met by the brain is through vascular control of the supply of nutrients.


Do we know a priori any rules about the world?

This is a pretty popular research topic!
One good place to start might be with the work of Spelke, she's all over this.
Try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNq_a_wgdgQ

If you prefer written words, this paper is a nice broad overview, although note the 2007 publishing date, there's been a fair bit of work since then.
Spelke, Elizabeth S., and Katherine D. Kinzler. "Core knowledge." Developmental science 10.1 (2007): 89-96.


Why does having many options harm decision making?

The problems presented by having too many choices are defined at the personal level by Overchoice and at the organization level as Analysis Paralysis. However, they both cover the same idea, wherein too many choices overwhelm a person's decision making process as each alternative is considered.


What causes the spokes of a Wagon Wheel to "move"(rotate) in the opposite direction of the Wagon Wheel itself?

This happens when the wheel is observed as an image through a projector or with light shining on it that is periodically blinking. What you are seeing is essentially the additive effects of two periodic functions, the first is the period of the light flicker and the second is the period of the wheel rotation.

So, if the wheel is rotating at a frequency that is evenly divisible by the frequency of the light, then the spokes appear to be standing still. If it is rotating faster, then they are appear to be moving in one direction. If it is rotating slower, then it appears to be moving in the other.

Under household lighting, the light pulses are at 60 Hz. The frame rate of movie cameras is usually 24 Hz.


How do mammals estimate the speed of moving objects?

@AliceD gave a great answer on the bottom up pathway. Let me add some top-down processing bits into the picture, since that's what you are asking.

First of all, at a perceptual level, motion perception is biased by prior expectations and strength of motion signal. E.g., see:

Stocker, A. A. and Simoncelli, E. P. (2006). Noise characteristics and prior expectations in human visual speed perception. Nature Neuroscience, 9(4):578-585. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn1669

The neural activity of MT (and behavior) is known to be modulated by attention. E.g., see:

Monkey Area MT Latencies to Speed Changes Depend on Attention and Correlate with Behavioral Reaction Times. Neuron. 78(4):740–750. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2013.03.014


Methods for stimulating exact positions in the body

For experimental purposes, an electrode array or comparable 2D device can be mounted and re-mounted on the same spot by using visual markers, e.g. with water resistant ink. By using a matrix of actuators with a back and front, and a clearly defined "up and down" (and/or left and right) one could suffice by just two little spots on the skin.

Alternatively, stable bodily features can be used when applicable. For example ribs and vertebrae are stable positions that can serve as markers.

A more sophisticated means is a stereotactic procedure. For example the head can be easily fixated using a chin rest and head support on the forehead. This pretty much fixates the head. This is for example used with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, as shown in the figure below:

Source: Hospimedica

Although this list is not exhaustive, it gives an idea of possibilities.


What term is used to define long duration sexual intercourse addiction/hunger?

It sounds like you're describing delayed orgasm. I've condensed the relevant bits of the following paper:

  Jenkins & Mulhall. Delayed orgasm and anorgasmia. Fertility and Sterility, 2015; 104(5):1082-1088.

    Delayed orgasm/anorgasmia defined as the persistent or recurrent difficulty, delay in, or absence of attaining orgasm after sufficient sexual stimulation, which causes personal distress. Delayed orgasm and anorgasmia are associated with significant sexual dissatisfaction. A focused medical history can shed light on the potential etiologies, which include medications, penile sensation loss, endocrinopathies, penile hyperstimulation, and psychological etiologies. Unfortunately, there are no excellent pharmacotherapies for delayed orgasm/anorgasmia, and treatment revolves largely around addressing potential causative factors and psychotherapy.

  Definition

    Delayed orgasm is further classified as lifelong/acquired, generalized/situational, and mild/moderate/severe. An acquired dysfunction establishes that the patient previously had normal orgasm timing. Situational dysfunction implies the man has problems in a particular scenario or scenarios, yet functioning normally in others.

    There is no set time threshold for what defines DO. Time threshold for distress is dependent on the partners involved. Some men will reach orgasm with one partner in 15 minutes and have no distress, but with another partner it may cause severe distress because the partner may complain of pain with prolonged intercourse. A population-based survey established that the median intravaginal ejaculatory latency time (IELT) was 5.4 minutes and 2 SD above was approximately 22 minutes. A provider with a patient complaining of IELT longer than 22 minutes will theoretically qualify him for the diagnosis of DO. One should differentiate between problems with of ejaculation and orgasm.

  Physiology of orgasm

    Orgasm is a complex neurobiological process that comes as a result of sexual activity (physical sensation) and/or arousal (cognitive awareness). The physiology of ejaculation is discussed elsewhere. When ejaculation occurs, the brain processes the sensation of the pressure buildup within the posterior urethra (bladder neck and external urinary sphincter are closed contemporaneously) leading up to seminal fluid emission and the contraction of the periurethral musculature. This processing leads to the triggering of an orgasm.

  Pathophysiology

    Hyperstimulation

      Some men obtain greater pleasure from masturbation than they do with sexual intercourse and may continue deep-rooted habits such as frequent masturbation or using idiosyncratic masturbation techniques. Studies have shown a correlation between DO and men with idiosyncratic masturbation practices. Also, with increasing frequency of masturbation the sensitivity of the penis can decline and lead to a vicious cycle where the man increases masturbation force to counteract the declining sensitivity, therefore leading to worsening DO. Vaginal intercourse or orogenital stimulation may not be able to replicate the stimulation achieved through idiosyncratic masturbation and this may result in reduced penile stimulation leading to difficulty achieving an orgasm.

    Penile Sensation Loss

      Penile sensation loss has been shown to increase with age. In a literature review by Rowland, he plotted penile sensory thresholds as a function of age as well as sexual functional status. He found that penile sensation loss was more commonly present in those men with increased age and those with sexual dysfunctions.

    Psychosexual Causes

      Delayed orgasm based on situational aspects (i.e., difficulties with a specific partner and not with another) is more likely to be due to a psychological etiology. One study looked at stress and anxiety related to timed intercourse demands for fertility treatments and found DO developed in 6% of patients related to elevated anxiety levels. A novel study by Kirby et al. used a rat model to show how stress can suppress the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, which is important in healthy normal sexual function. They showed that acute and chronic immobilization stress led to an increase in adrenal glucocorticoids causing an increase in gonadotropin inhibitory hormone, which suppresses the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis by inhibition of GnRH.

  Management strategies

    It is true that some men with DO/AO never have an etiology diagnosed that reflects our limited understanding of the physiology of orgasm and the pathophysiology of these conditions. Therapy is focused on defining and treating any overt underlying causes often in conjunction with psychotherapy. Various lifestyle changes include steps to improve intimacy, reduce masturbation frequency, change of masturbation style, and decreasing alcohol consumption.

Other possibilities, if I'm misinterpreting your question:

Hypersexual disorder (HD; "a pattern of behavior involving intense preoccupation with sexual fantasies, urges and activities, leading to adverse consequences and clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important functions") was considered for inclusion in the DSM-5, but was eventually rejected by the American Psychiatric Association:

  Reid & Kafka. Controversies About Hypersexual Disorder and the DSM-5. Current Sexual Health Reports, 2014; 6(4):259-264.

    The concept of mental disorders has also been condemned by some who suggest it is a value-laden socially constructed phenomena used to impose conformity to cultural norms. Not surprisingly, similar arguments have been launched against the HD proposal with allegations that HD pathologizes normal variants of healthy sexual behavior, and hence, it does not meet the requirements for “deviance.” Another frequent criticism is that HD could be an extension or manifestation of an existing mental disorder. This latter critique should not be quickly dismissed given high comorbidity rates of other mental illness commonly reported among treatment-seeking samples of hypersexual patients. Further, it is widely believed among clinicians working with hypersexual patients that sex is used to “cope” with challenging situations or as a way of “coping” in the wake of emotional distress. Such assertions might imply that hypersexuality is an attempt to compensate for maladaptive systems designed to regulate emotion. Subsequently, wouldn’t the more parsimonious conceptualization of hypersexuality be some type of an emotional dysfunction disorder or an adjustment disorder rather than an independent pathology?

    If one argues for HD as an independent disorder, they must also identify which internal functions are failing to operate and advance some theory implicating what mechanisms of action are purported to cause the dysfunction. Sadly, sex researchers investigating hypersexuality have often failed in this endeavor with a few notable exceptions. For example, neurobiological mechanisms linked to sexual excitation and sexual inhibition has been advanced as a plausible explanation for hypersexuality. A broader hypothesis about executive deficits in frontal lobe functioning reported mixed findings where hypersexual patients self-reported executive deficits but did not exhibit executive dysfunctions when tested. Many have suggested addiction, impulsivity, and compulsivity models, although it’s questionable whether these conceptualizations really constitute theoretical models given their lack of specificity, falsifiable testability, or explanatory power for the construct of hypersexuality. Moreover, proponents of these approaches have yet to clearly operationalize and delineate the respective distinct contributions of addiction, impulsivity, or compulsivity as they relate to hypersexual behavior.

While HD wasn't accepted as an established diagnosis, compulsive sexual behavior is a common disorder with similar criteria:

  Derbyshire & Grant. Compulsive Sexual Behavior: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 2015; 4(2):37-43.

    Compulsive sexual behavior can generally be divided into two categories: Paraphilic and nonparaphilic. Paraphilias are typically considered to be behaviors that have been deemed socially unacceptable that involve non-human objects, suffering of one’s self or a partner, children or a non-consenting person (for example, fetishism, exhibitionism, and pedophilia). Nonparaphilic CSB, which is characterized by more typical sexual desires, include compulsive sexual acts with multiple partners, constant fixation on a partner that may be considered unobtainable, compulsive masturbation, compulsive use of pornography, and compulsive sex and sexual acts within a consensual relationship.


Is an avoidance of incest/inbreeding learned or instinctive?

This is not my field, but I gave it a quick search. This article seems to speak directly to this question, summarizing and comparing multiple theories to each other. In light of these theories, the article also seems to propose a synthesized theory of the avoidance. Formal citation below. Hope this helps!

APA Citation

Paul, R. A. (2011). Incest Avoidance: Oedipal and Preoedipal, Natural and Cultural. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 58(6), 1087–1112. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003065110395759


A sleep study by Van Dongen et al (2003) uses three metrics to measure the effects of fatigue due to sleep loss.  The first is cognitive throughput:

A serial addition/subtraction task was included in the assessment
battery to measure cognitive throughput. The serial
addition/subtraction task is a subject-paced task requiring the
completion of 50 mental arithmetic trials. The average number of
correct responses per min was used as a neurobehavioral assay of
cognitive throughput performance.

Second, alertness / vigilance (response time to stimuli):

The neurobehavioral assessment battery included a psychomotor
vigilance task to measure behavioral alertness. The psychomotor
vigilance task (PVT) is a sustained-attention reaction time task with
a random inter-stimulus interval of 2–10 s. Lapses (reaction times
greater than 500 ms) were counted per 10 min test bout as a measure of
performance.

Third, memory:

The neurobehavioral assessment battery also included a computerized
digit symbol substitution task to measure working memory. This
subject-paced task involves the matching of digits (0–9) to symbols
(circle, triangle, etc.). The number of correct responses in 1.5 min
was counted to measure working memory performance.

The metrics ought to be effective for measuring mental performance due to fatigue whatever the cause of fatigue might be.
References

Van Dongen, H.P.A., Maislin, G., Mullington, J.M., Dinges, D.F. & others (2003). The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation. SLEEP-NEW YORK THEN WESTCHESTER-, 26, 117-129.


What is it called when a student tends to speak about what he knows?

Tom Boardman's suggestion in the question comments about the Law of the Instrument ("if all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail") seems to capture an important aspect of this, especially with respect to illustrating that it's not necessarily done out of malice.
The simplest theoretical explanation would cast this in terms of top-down processing and attention (Ward, 2008), combined with the availability heuristic (Schwarz et al., 1991). These two factors lead to a situation where whatever a student is knowledgeable about is more likely to come to mind in a discussion, and then whatever is on the student's mind is incorporated into the discussion. When the student encounters something that doesn't fit into what they know well, they might inadvertently change the subject to something that does, simply because that's what comes to mind and thus ends up being what shapes their thoughts.
References

Lawrence M. Ward (2008) Attention. Scholarpedia, 3(10):1538.
Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F., Klumpp, G., Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991). Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 61(2), 195-202.


As Wikipedia points out:

  Myelin is a lipid-rich (fatty) substance formed in the central nervous system (CNS) by glial cells called oligodendrocytes, and in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) by Schwann cells.

When referring to the sheath, you are referring to the covering which is made of myelin.

  Myelin sheaths are sleeves of fatty tissue that protect your nerve cells from damage (WebMD).

The thing is that myelin formed in the CNS and PNS is only used in the form of a sheath  to protect your nerve cells, so when physicians refer to the myelin, they are referring to the sheath.

With demyelination, the integrity of the sheath is being compromised.


I am looking for the name of a phenomenon where people blindly follow others when they sense a threat

Herd mentality (aka mob mentality) involves people following others without (deliberate) thinking - ie, impulsively or blindly:

  ... describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt
  certain behaviors on a largely emotional, rather than rational, basis.

Most experiments in herd mentality involve strangers.  There are other terms for non-impulsive behaviors (Wikipedia lists group intelligence, crowd wisdom, groupthink, deindividuation, and decentralized decision making).

That is contrasted with swarm behavior.  Herd mentality usually refers to individuals conforming to or blindly following others, whereas swarm behavior does not involve individuals doing the same thing:

  ... it is an emergent behaviour arising from simple rules that are
  followed by individuals and does not involve any central coordination.

Rather, in swarm behavior, individuals make different decisions depending on what others around them are doing, such as avoiding predators based on the reactions of others.  Confusingly, "herding" is swarm behavior (in insects it's called swarming; but fish school, birds flock, and mammals herd).


Can tinnitus be measured with EEG or MEG?

Michelle Heijblom's (2009) master thesis on Visualising tinnitus with fMRI and EEG mentions the following:

  Different studies report that tinnitus is characterised by an increase
  in slow-wave activity (0.5- 4Hz: delta activity) and a decrease in
  alpha activity (8-12 Hz) at temporal regions. Recently it has been
  suggested that this loss of alpha power is related to an increase in
  gamma power. [Weisz 2005, Weisz 2007, Lorenz 2009, Ashton 2007,
  Wienbruch 2006]. Weisz et al. state that the alpha decrease and delta
  increase resemble the state during slow wave sleep. This supports the
  idea that the changes in spontaneous brain activity might be mediated
  by sensory deprivation (hearing loss).


Physiologically speaking is anxiety and adrenaline the same?

Not quite the same, although there is some overlap.

What's colloquially known as an "adrenaline rush" (e.g. what you'd experience in a roller coaster or more generally in a fight-or-flight situation) is the result of the body's fast reaction system to stress, sometimes called the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) axis. SAM activation causes the adrenal medulla to release epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline);.

On the other hand, sustained/chronic stress (eventually) activates the slower stress-response axis, known as the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis. In humans, HPA activation releases cortisol from the zona fasciculata of the adrenal cortex. (The adrenal cortex is the outer layer of the adrenal gland, while the adrenal medulla is the inner area of the gland.) One of the actions of cortisol is to contain the activation of the SAM axis. (Textbook of
Anxiety Disorders, 2nd ed., p. 571 citing the highly influential paper of Munck et al.) Cortisol has its own negative-feedback loop.

So, in a panic attack you'd experience mostly SAM activation, or at least this will be the dominant effect. On the other hand, anxiety generally refers to a broader class of reactions to stress, including long-term ones. E.g., [older] people with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) may experience elevated cortisol, and this is reduced by SSRI medication. Other anxiety-related disorders such as PTSD have a much more complicated picture; cortisol levels are not terribly useful in distinguishing PTSD patients from controls. Recent research suggests however that a dysfunctional cortisol feedback loop may be present in PTSD; administration of cortisol after a potentially traumatic event seems to reduce later symptoms.

What I said above is a pretty simplified picture, in which I completely glossed over the complex pathways of stress-mediation in the brain, which actually make studying/treating anxiety disorders much less trivial.


Is there a specific term for false justifications?

I think the examples refer to a variety of possible terms.

In cognitive science, there is much interest in cases where justification is triggered unconsciously.  The general tendency to justify one's decisions - especially the bad ones - is called self-justification:

  Self-justification describes how, when a person encounters cognitive
  dissonance, or a situation in which a person's behavior is
  inconsistent with their beliefs, that person tends to justify the
  behavior and deny any negative feedback associated with the behavior.

When someone makes a decision they know is bad, and uses rational-sounding excuses to obfuscate this, it is called rationalization:

  In psychology and logic, rationalization or rationalisation (also
  known as making excuses) is a defense mechanism in which
  controversial behaviors or feelings are justified and explained in a
  seemingly rational or logical manner to avoid the true explanation,
  and are made consciously tolerable – or even admirable and superior –
  by plausible means.

If scientific-sounding data is added to make a decision seem more objective than it is, then it is called intellectualization:

  Intellectualization is a defense mechanism where reasoning is used to
  block confrontation with an unconscious conflict and its associated
  emotional stress where thinking is used to avoid feeling.

Cherry-picking data to support an argument is an example of confirmation bias:

  Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search
  for, interpret, prefer, and recall information in a way that confirms
  one's beliefs or hypotheses while giving disproportionately less
  attention to information that contradicts it.

A common view in psychology is that most explanations of decisions made are actually "post-hoc rationalization", or "post-rationalization" (see for example self-perception theory).

Sometimes justification is done consciously / intentionally.  The term you used, cherry picking, is perfectly valid in this case.  Another example is spin.


How long does the trace of a memory last in the brain?

This is a very difficult question that we don't know the answer to yet.  Here are some references.

Impermanence of dendritic spines in live adult CA1 hippocampus
Alessio Attardo, James E. Fitzgerald & Mark J. Schnitzer
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v523/n7562/full/nature14467.html

  Strikingly, CA1 spine turnover dynamics differed sharply from those seen previously in the neocortex7, 8, 9. Mathematical modelling revealed that the data best matched kinetic models with a single population of spines with a mean lifetime of approximately 1–2 weeks. This implies ~100% turnover in ~2–3 times this interval, a near full erasure of the synaptic connectivity pattern.

Long-Term In Vivo Imaging of Dendritic Spines in the Hippocampus Reveals Structural Plasticity
Ligang Gu, Stefanie Kleiber, Lena Schmid, Felix Nebeling, Miriam Chamoun, Julia Steffen, Jens Wagner, and Martin Fuhrmann
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/42/13948.short

Transient and Persistent Dendritic Spines in the Neocortex In Vivo
Anthony J.G.D. Holtmaat, Joshua T. Trachtenberg3, Linda Wilbrecht, Gordon M. Shepherd, Xiaoqun Zhang, Graham W. Knott, Karel Svoboda
http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(05)00004-8

  Dendritic spines were imaged over days to months in the apical tufts of neocortical pyramidal neurons (layers 5 and 2/3) in vivo. A fraction of thin spines appeared and disappeared over a few days, while most thick spines persisted for months. In the somatosensory cortex, from postnatal day (PND) 16 to PND 25 spine retractions exceeded additions, resulting in a net loss of spines. The fraction of persistent spines (lifetime ≥ 8 days) grew gradually during development and into adulthood (PND 16–25, 35%; PND 35–80, 54%; PND 80–120, 66%; PND 175–225, 73%), providing evidence that synaptic circuits continue to stabilize even in the adult brain, long after the closure of known critical periods. In 6-month-old mice, spines turn over more slowly in visual compared to somatosensory cortex, possibly reflecting differences in the capacity for experience-dependent plasticity in these brain regions.

Stably maintained dendritic spines are associated with lifelong memories
Guang Yang1, Feng Pan1 & Wen-Biao Gan1
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7275/full/nature08577.html

  Importantly, a small fraction of new spines induced by novel experience, together with most spines formed early during development and surviving experience-dependent elimination, are preserved and provide a structural basis for memory retention throughout the entire life of an animal.


A type of long-term memory where I can remember full dialogues

the cognitive skills of a human population have a great variance. I am more like your friend, with episodic memory below average but semantic memory above average. You seem to have episodic memory above average (I envy you on that, because a large part of our feeling of self identity depends on episodic memory). There are extreme cases of people that remember almost everything they experience or read, or hear. A nice book on the topic is Luria's book "the mind of a mnemonist". It is a short book, and I'm sure you'll find it pretty interesting.


Term for when the more you invest yourself in something, the less you agree to drop it

Not certain this is what you are thinking about, but this sounds a lot like the idea of "sunk costs", which is a form of loss aversion.

Sunk costs means that you tend to overvalue the effort you have already put in to something (time, money, etc), and often are willing to put in more effort to try to rescue what you already put in, even though the additional investment (again: time, money, etc) is not worth it. Often people make poor decisions (financial, relationship, etc) because they feel like they have "put too much in" to it.

A related concept is the Endowment effect (first mentioned in another answer by JoaoBotelho). Like sunk costs, some of the endowment effect can be explained by loss aversion, though some experiments have also shown a smaller mere ownership effect which is not also explained by loss aversion. These effects describe how people tend to put more value on things they own or have some relationship to (for example, an object held versus an object at a distance) versus things they do not.


The OpenEEG project has some information for building your own EEG system. Instructables has a "simple" EEG circuit you can build. Note that this is going to be somewhat costly and time consuming because you are dealing with tiny voltages and high impedances.

OpenBCI has some hardware for sale (still expensive but not as bad as research-grade equipment) and their forum can be helpful for the DIY EEG enthusiast.

You also might want to look into utilizing some existing publicly available EEG datasets instead of collecting the data yourself:

BCNI
UCI
NIAL
UCSD
More links


I have developed a self-regulation system that allows change at the physiological level. Does it have any merit?

I'm not going to answer the question I think you want answered: whether your system has merit. Instead, I'm going to answer a related question that I think you actually need answered: How do you determine if a therapeutic approach is effective?

Ultimately, this sort of question can only be answered with a clinical trial. In a clinical trial, your approach will be tested against other approaches or placebo approaches to look for differences in outcomes. In order to do a clinical trial, you need to get the permission of an appropriate regulatory body in order to enroll subjects and continue. Doing anything else is unethical.

In order to get this permission, you need some credibility in the field. For this sort of project, that would probably start with either having some sort of degree or certification as a clinical psychologist or therapist, or recruiting people with those credentials to help you with your study. If you don't think your idea is worth this effort, your idea is not worthwhile.

On the way to getting this education, you will learn about existing strategies that are used, which will help you to refine and consider your own terminology. Maybe you think you've invented something new but find that it already exists under a term you didn't know. Maybe you find someone else has already studied something similar and found no effect. Maybe you find that your idea is really a novel improvement to something already used in practice. Learning these things will help you to frame your idea. If you don't think your idea is worth this effort, your idea is not worthwhile.

If you want to go in more depth along this way of thinking, the next step would be a research degree, most likely a PhD. The training for a PhD will teach you how to approach these ideas scientifically, to look through the literature, and just generally to go deeper into a topic than you would in a clinical position.

Note that there are many many many people that go down this path and put a lot of effort into their work: there aren't really any easy answers left. It's a lot of work to find positive results. You probably won't start researching your own ideas, but rather expanding incrementally on the work of others. At that point, you will have enough credibility and background knowledge to test new hypotheses. You might find that your original thinking makes no sense. You might find new motivations by reading about other peoples' work (and 'standing on the shoulders of giants'). If you don't think your idea is worth this effort, your idea is not worthwhile.


Is the condition Pathological Intoxication recognised as real?

Pathological Intoxication was removed as a diagnosis from the DSM-IV (the psychiatric diagnostic manual used by American psychiatrists) when it was published in 1994, but was left in the ICD-10 (the diagnostic manual published by the World Health Organization) which was published in 1992. The decision to remove the disorder from the DSM-IV was based on literature reviews indicating there was no evidence for a separate syndrome of pathological intoxication (Salloum & Mezzich, Psychiatric Diagnosis: Challenges and Prospects, 2009, John Wiley & Sons, pg. 123). The disorder is not included in the DSM-5, which was published in 2013. The ICD-11 draft redirects searches of "pathological intoxication" to the "alcohol intoxication" entry; pathological intoxication is listed as a narrower term, but no additional information is provided (http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd11/browse/f/en#/http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int%2ficd%2fentity%2f1339202943).

A 2012 review (Fuelner, T., The minotaur defense: The myth of the pathological intoxication defense, American Criminal Law Review, 49(i4), pp.1969-1999; https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=264897) provides an overview of the historical and current medical and legal definitions of the condition. The author concludes that the concept has largely been discredited in psychiatry, but has some continued support in legal circles. However, the author argues the use of the condition in criminal defense should be eliminated.


How do laypeople form a judgment that another person is smart or intelligent?

Okay here's the answer. What you are talking about doesn't have a name yet. There a many different types of intelligence and an IQ test only tests some of them. So you are right in the sense you can't really tell how "smart" someone is off of that. For the purposes of this discussion we will now refer to the word that doesn't really exist yet as "smart or smartness". How do you know if someone is "smarter" than you? That's subjective all on it's own. I think you meant to say, how are the "smartnesses"(i know oh god bad english but i had to say it that way) of any two people different and either what process is behind our ability to "tell" if someone is smart or you want to know how can someone who is less smart than someone can tell? Well, if there is a big enough difference in IQ, most people can tell just by talking to a person. A long time ago I heard that if there is a difference of 30 IQ points then it becomes difficult to understand a person because of the difference in known vocab and daily use of that vocab. But there are many different ways of seeing if someone is smart or not.

That's boring so let's talk about why everyone is wrong about intelligence. I think you are more after that then anything else. So know that the only reason we have an IQ test, is to test for the difference in the standard deviations between the "intelligence" of children to see if they need help or advancement. 2 SDs below or above makes you different from everyone else and you help special needs in some aspect. That's an extremely crude way of explaining that all, but it works for the purposes of what I am trying to explain now. (That's 30 IQ points up or down from 100 by the way). For the most part, IQ tests for adults don't really tell us what we are trying to find out, they were designed for children. If you want to see if someone is actually intelligent across all aspects of adult "smartnessess", you can't use an IQ test. Think of the IQ test being used for adults as a way of measuring how well they may do in school or a similar area. But if we want to really find out how "smart" adults are we do need all aspects of intelligence that we currently know. For example, ever heard of street smarts? Some people claim they have street smarts and they don't need a formal edu because of this and that's what makes them "smart" or smarter then everyone else. Street smarts can mean a million different things but lets assume it means skills that have been picked up only by "living" on the streets, AKA a low econ area with high crime or moderate crime in most cases. Not that you are self taught in all aspects of intelligence. So while "street smarts" could be an aspect of intelligence, not the full picture. Also someone with street smarts might just mean they are self taught in all aspect and they very well could be our definitions of smart. Remember that school is designed for the average person and it is not suited for people that stray too far from the average(in any aspect of "smartness" but in the case of school we can say IQ). A smart person will be smart regardless of a formal edu or not and so will a intellectually challenged or disabled person will always be that way(brain damage in their case doesn't go away). As long as the damage is physical and not psychological. Anyways, I personally don't think we have mapped out everything yet as far as our true intelligence goes because for the simple reason of we just haven't gotten to it yet. Unless you have an idea on how knowing your real adult IQ could help anyone besides helping find people with intellectual disabilities which need help(which the current test can already do), there is no application for it. Also it's been proven in the past that it's harmful for people to know how "smart" they really are.(look up army test alpha and beta i think, something like that), everyone overestimates their "smartness:. I personally think it would be harmful to the public if they had that info. In the US that is. I dunno about other countries but they are probably the same in first world countries. I doubt anyone who has to worry about survival, worries about how smart they are. Well I hope that answered your question. If you want sources, I am lazy and there is enough info for you to check any claim i've made on google. You wanted the answer anyways so you do the leg work if you don't believe me. There's also my opinion but i;ve stated which of this is my opinion. The rest is from about 7 years of college in psychology and another 3 years or so of personal research in the area of psych. So...I could be an expert just based on all the hours I've spent in the field of psych. So the opinion of an expert in his field is probably good for his word on some of his opinions yes?
I mean no malicious in anything I say, I am just normally sarcastic, so no offense on anything if you have taken it that way. I meant none.


Its difficult to understand exactly which type of parenting style and discipline you experienced so please allow me to describe what I was able to find on parenting.

There are many different styles of parenting. Authoritarian which are strict and rule based. Authoritative which has rules which are followed more responsive to the child's needs and feelings. Permissive which are the "lets be friends" type. Uninvolved which providing basic physical care without communicating or in some cases becoming neglectful.

Each of these parenting styles tend to follow specific punishment outlines.

Authoritarian parents tend to spank and say things like "Because I'm your parent. Because it is my house." rather than caring for the emotional needs of the child. Modern psychology never endorses spanking as healthy. Spanking teaches children to be aggressive. Possibly even associating such traits with love if a parent showed affection in association with spanking as is frequently practiced.

Authoritative parents provide guidelines for children to live by which are punished by a logical system of positive and negative punishment. A logical system of punishment is one where it follows from your behaviour that such actions could be eliminated and or added. The punishment fits the crime. For instance sass off toward the authority figure with a cell phone can lead to the loss of the cell phone. This would be a negative punishment where privileges are removed. A positive consequence for not doing laundry might be a fee for the laundry done that day. It adds the burden of a payment to the child. Sometimes bad behaviour can cause you frustration and its never appropriate to discipline a child while angry. Time outs are also an important healthy way to punish children. This is punishment by boredom so its important that the pre-established place be safe and uninteresting. In my experience a chair in the corner is more effective than the bed in the bedroom. Token economy a clear and consistent reward for behavior also works well. I never have experienced a situation where allowing a child to learn from their mistake by allowing "natural consequences" has worked well. Its labor intensive. Most parents simply use "natural consequences" as an excuse to by proxy harm/abuse, disengage or nag rather than prop up.

Psychology also doesn't endorse the passive parent who never disciplines their child either or the extreme of the passive the uninvolved which abandons their child.

The follow up to discipline is just as important as the discipline itself.

Like I said earlier with the information you gave its not possible to tell how healthy your punishments were. Its really not my place to judge your “Karmic Punishment”. From the descriptions I gave I think you can make up your mind.


Bias caused by the opinion of a famous person on matters they are not well-educated on?

I don't believe that there is a cognitive bias that has been accepted by the scientific community that fits your fact pattern.  You can look for a matching cognitive bias yourself in this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect#Better-than-average_effects

I don't see one.  In fact, I don't even think people would believe a celebrity over an educated climate scientist on the current status of climate change.  It may help the person remember the ad or public announcement because a celebrity was the one to announce it but I doubt the credibility of the celebrity exceeds that of the scientist.


How can positive and negative mindsets influence interpersonal relationships with others?

The lexical approach may assist. The lexical hypothesis states that, ‘All aspects of human personality, which are or have been of importance, interest or utility, have already become recorded in the substance of language’(Cattell, 1943) and, ‘When an idea is important, people are likely to have a word for it … the more important something is, … the more words there are likely to be’(Miller, 1996). The atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour uses a lexical approach to visualise words using the axes of affiliation and dominance (Mobbs, 2020).
Relevant synonyms are:

positive: assured, beneficial, clear, complete, confident, constructive, convincing, decisive, effective, persuasive, practical, pragmatic, proper, real, regular, sanguine, satisfied, sure, unreserved, useful, wholehearted, worthwhile.

negative: adversarial, adverse, damaging, derogatory, destructive, dismissive, disparaging, hostile, inhospitable, prejudicial, untoward.

At face value, people with the traits associated with positive are more likely to attract others.  The traits associated with negative are more likely to dissuade others from associating with the individual.
The visualisation of positive and negative according to the atlas approach is shown below.

References
Cattell RB. The description of personality: basic traits resolved into clusters. J Abnorm Soc Psychol. 1943; 38: 476–506. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054116
Miller GA. The science of words. New York: Scientific American Library; 1996.
Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877
Declared interest: I am the author of the atlas paper.


For print (Generally)

  In his book Cashvertising, Drew Eric Whitman cites a 1986 study of fonts (printed on paper) that found only 12 percent of participants effectively comprehended a paragraph set in sans-serif type versus 67 percent who were given a version set in serif typeface ...

  In a test of three different fonts, two serifs (Garamond and Times New Roman) and one sans serif (Helvetica), he found

  66 percent were able to comprehend Garamond;
  31.5 percent Times New Roman, and
  12.5 percent Helvetica(out of a total of 1,010,000 people surveyed).

  (Source)

On screen (Generally)

  Several observations can be made regarding the examined font types. First, no significant differences in reading efficiency were detected between the font types at any size. There were, however, significant differences in reading time. Generally, Times and Arial were read faster than Courier, Schoolbook, and Georgia. Fonts at the 12-point size were read faster than fonts at the 10-point size. In addition, a font type x size interaction was found for the perception of font legibility. In general, however, Arial, Courier, and Georgia were perceived as the most legible.

  For font attractiveness, Georgia was perceived as being more attractive than Arial, Courier, and Comic, while Times was perceived as more attractive than Courier. (Bernard, et al. 2002)

But it is not that simple

Dyslexia sufferers can have different requirements.  Most of the recommendations come from associations for people with dyslexia and they agree in using sans-serif fonts. The British Dyslexia Association recommends

Use Arial, Comic Sans or, as alternatives to these, Verdana, Tahoma, Century Gothic, and Trebuchet
Most users prefer dark print on a pale background but colour preferences vary
Avoid green and red/pink as these are difficult for colour-blind individuals. (British Dyslexia Association, 2012).

Also

WebAIM also has articles and resources for those with accessibility in mind

References

Bernard, M. et al. (2002). A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which Size and Type is Best? [Online]
Available at: Wichita State University Software Usability and Research Laboratoryhttp://usabilitynews.org/a-comparison-of-popular-online-fonts-which-size-and-type-is-best

British Dyslexia Association. (2012). Dyslexia style guide [Online]
Available at: http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/common/ckeditor/filemanager/userfiles/About_Us/policies/Dyslexia_Style_Guide.pdf


Is there a scientific opinion about the connection between Asperger Syndrome and AD(H)D?

There is a significant overlap between symptoms of classic Autism, Asperger syndrome, AD(H)D and OCD.
The following graph gives a good overview of how they are correlated at the behavioral and sensory level:

(source)

Further reading

Common brain changes found in children with autism, ADHD and OCD
The Co-Occurrence of Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Children – What Do We Know?
Autistic traits in some children with ADHD
A Third Of Autism Cases Also Have ADHD Symptoms
Autism and ADHD: Overlapping and discriminating symptoms
Autism and ADHD Share Genetic Similarities
Timing of the Diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder


Does not seeing sunlight for several days impair moral judgment and lower mood?

Although not the question you asked, there has been at least one study looking at the influence of 'cave-like environments' on cognition - people are more prone to magical thinking/illogical beliefs (not their term) when placed in a dark, windowless environment.
Rigoli et al (2013): Cave-like Environments Facilitate Magical Thinking

Abstract
The cognitive mechanisms that underlie beliefs in the supernatural are not well understood. In an attempt to understand this phenomenon, we hypothesized that the cave environment “affords” such usage. In our experiment, 52 participants completed a survey about their metaphysical beliefs inside a room providing a great deal of natural light, while another 52 participants completed the same survey in a dark and windowless room. The survey asked participants to rate their beliefs in a variety of supernatural phenomena and also included multiple-choice questions which described bizarre scenarios that could be explained either scientifically or supernaturally. The supernatural responses to both the rating-scale questions and to the multiple-choice questions were significantly higher in the cave-like condition. These results are consistent with anthropological claims that the dark zones of caves may have played a role in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness that contributed to humans’ tendency toward magical thinking.


Is Carl Jung synchronicity scientific theory?

Synchronicity is an interesting philosophical idea; unfortunately there is no evidence that it actually exists.  Therefore, there are some people who consider Jung's theory to be pseudoscientific.

Robert Todd Carroll, in his book "The Skeptics Dictionary," notes that "even if there were a synchronicity between the mind and the world such that certain coincidences resonate with transcendental truth, there would still be the problem of figuring out those truths. What guide could one possibly use to determine the correctness of an interpretation?" There is no scientific or objective way to determine whether synchronicity is valid or not; it's all subjective personal opinion and experience and flexible definitions.

You can read more on this on this LiveScience webpage
I also commented on synchronicity within an article I wrote in May

Many of Jung’s theories are considered to be pseudoscience. One example is synchronicity, his idea that meaningful connections in the world manifest through coincidence with no apparent causal link. This is what Jung referred to as the acausal connecting principle (Nickell, 2002). This is because these ideas culminated from his ideas about the paranormal. Despite his own experiments failing to confirm the phenomenon (Shermer & Linse, 2002) he held on to the idea as an explanation for apparent ESP (Jung, 2013).

References
Jung, C. G. (2013). Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle. London: Routledge.
Nickell, J. (2002). “Visitations”: After-Death Contacts. Skeptical Inquirer 12(3) Retrieved from https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/visitations_after-death_contacts/?/sb/show/visitations_after-death_contacts
Shermer, M. & Linse, P. (2002). The skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience (Vol. 1). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.


Are there any official guidelines of person-centred therapy?

Humanistic approaches to psychotherapy are wide ranging and not just person-centred therapy.  Some allow the scientific approach into the therapeutic discussion, and some don't.
Person Centred Therapy (PCT) is very different to the Freudian approach to therapy, and how the therapy is provided will be dependent on the form of therapy the therapist works within — integrative or pure person-centred.
Is there any official manual?
There is no "official manual" I know of, but you can gain a lot of knowledge on the person-centred approach by reading Mearns, et al. (2013) which was a core reading material in one of the years of my training in integrative psychotherapy.  There is also a YouTube copy of an old documentary showing Carl Rogers demonstrating PCT.
The difference with PCT compared to other forms of therapy is that therapy is not led by the therapist.  Therapy and the sessions are led purely by the client and what they wish to bring to the session — hence the name Person-Centred Therapy.  From a pure person-centred approach, you are not necessarily completely shunning the scientific approach to therapy.  You are just not pushing the scientific approach to therapy towards the client.

Distrust of experts runs deep among person-centred practitioners.  The person-centred counsellor must learn to wear her expertise as an invisible garment in order to be an effective counsellor (Mearns, et al., 2013).

The Counselling Directory (n.d.) also points out the following:

In some psychotherapeutic approaches, the therapist and their observations are deemed ‘expert’. The person-centred approach moves away from this idea, and instead trusts that we have an innate tendency to find fulfilment in our own personal potentials (self-actualisation). By facilitating this, the approach helps the client to recognise their own capacity for not only self-healing, but personal growth too.

What would you refer to as evidence/research for person-centred therapy?
I haven't found a PDF or other form of access to the article as of yet, but according the the abstract, Rogers (1979) discusses the theory and research behind this approach.
Some may consider this form of therapy to be pseudoscientific as it doesn't follow the Popper classification of science (Popper, 1959 & 1963), and some believe that although Rogers put the approach forward as a different form of therapy, it should be seen as a way of working as a therapist in all therapies — with congruence, empathy and unconditional positive regard.
Interestingly though, in an encounter group run by Carl Rogers, he said there were times when he had to break all his own rules, emphasising that it was more important to be spontaneous and real than to be carefully empathic or relentlessly unconditionally positively regarding – meaning that sometimes he would violate the core principles of his own theory of PCT.  He might direct a person on what they must do or tell them forcibly that what they were doing was wrong (Geraghty, 2016).
References
Counselling Directory (n.d.). Person-centred therapy. Retrieved from: https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/person-centred-therapy.html
Geraghty, A. (2016). We need to talk about love. Therapy Today 27(1), pp. 20-23.
Mearns, D., Thorne, B. & McLeod, J. (2013). Person-Centred Counselling in Action, 4th Edition (Counselling in Action Series). London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Popper, K. P. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Routledge.
Popper, K. P. (1963). Science as Falsification. In Conjectures and Refutations, New York: Routledge and Keagan Paul, pp. 33-39
Rogers, C. R. (1979). The Foundations of the Person-Centered Approach. Education, 100(2), 98-107.


Do twin studies overestimate heritability?

It seems likely that some percentage of twin studies would fail to account for all the systematic environmental variables that connect their twins. In this case, the effects of these variables would still cause a correlation, which would be attributed to heritability. "A second look at twin studies" by Lea Winerman discusses examples of these types of variables.