mteb/BrightProPsychologyRetrieval huggingface dataset:
Deflection of the basilar membrane

The basilar membrane becomes thicker and heavier from the basal end to the apical upper end - this is why high frequencies are perceived in the lower range and low frequencies in the upper range.

But why? Why does the traveling wave of the membrane reach its maximum amplitude at high frequencies at the bottom and at low frequencies at the top? How is this related to the width, stiffness and mass of the basilar membrane?
Has there ever been a split brain pianist?
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Has there ever been a split brain pianist?

I was thinking about this yesterday and it occurred to me that a split brain pianist might have an advantage over a non-split brain pianist; they could potentially read the bass and treble clef lines independently and thus process the lines independently. Perhaps this advantage would be meaningless at the professional level, but it surely could have the potential to make it easier for beginner pianists. I spent some time searching but was unfortunately unable to find any case studies of this.

I did, however, find a case study of a ex-professional pianist with alien hand syndrome whose symptoms were exacerbated when playing the piano, but it wasn't what I was looking for.

I'd also be interested in any examples of split brain patients who were able to play any instrument at all – I'd find the outcomes fascinating.
Can you use harmful addictions to build good habits?

I am reading the Pavlov's dog experiments, from it I learn that associating a dopamine high event with a neutral event will lead to later that neutral event triggering the same receptors in absence of the dopamine high event. I thought about this and wondered... what if I started doing some harmful addictions like cigarettes and smokes before studying something I may not be interested in... does this mean I would later associate studying with the kicks of these two harmful habits?

P.S: I am not saying to do these illicit substances in excess, just a mild amount where your brain can still function.

The above was the motivation, now is the real question: Has there been human trials based on this principle using illicit substances to train the mind in a positive way? Was it succesful..?
Name for the effect where people cause others to fulfill their expectations

I recall hearing a social cognition lecture a number of years ago in which the lecturer described a particular idea that centered around the role of self-fulfilling prophecies in relationships. For example, if I believe that x is a hostile jerk, I'll tend to treat them in a way that makes them more hostile. (A good example of a book that subscribes to this type of a view is Feeling Good Together by David Burns; I'm not sure if he subscribes to the exact theory that I'm trying to remember, though).

I'm pretty sure that there was a specific name for this, but I don't recall what it was.

Can someone help me identify which theory or term this is?
Why are there so few women in math and science Olympiads?

Why are there so few women in math olympics (IMO and etc)? If this is also related to the low participation of women in the Olympics compared to men, I would like to know.

Why Are There Still Only Few Women in Science An interesting article you can find on Nytimes about why low number of women in science

I also found some studies that try to explain why women's participation in math olympics is low. They have shown that many women also believe the stereotype that women are bad at math. Women who hold this belief may be reluctant to compete in math competitions, so it probably makes up for this effect.

Women and Mathematics: Stereotypes, Identity, and Achievement Both Genders Think Women Are Bad at Basic Math

I sent some studies that I read and found relevant.
How long does an area clean-up help it stay clean?

Sometime in middle or high school I remember coming across this popular thinking of, when an area or neighbourhood has some trash, it makes people think it's ok to litter there themselves, and the more trash there is, the more of an unspoken 'norm' littering becomes. However, the hope was that the reverse is also true, and if a neighbourhood's cleaned up, then it signals to people that littering is the anti-norm here.

But I have gone on trash cleaning walks around my neighbourhood in the past few months, and I can't say that that hope is totally founded. The street by my apartment building has trash reemerge with a vengeance within a week. It makes me think there's some discrepancy in how this is thought about. Like, it's harder to see during night-time, so it absolves you from confronting the results of trash on the grass, and the like.

Are there long-term studies around (various) neighbourhoods that study this behaviour, and detangle and clarify the different factors at play here? Other studies are good too.
Can a person be persuaded to become gay?

Can a person become gay? Can a person be persuaded to become one? I heard that gayness is correlated with some genetic characteristics so, I figured, laws against "gay propaganda" (e.g. in Russia) are anti-science, aren't they (in addition to being discriminatory)?
What is the neurobiological mechanism behind masochism?

I tried to search in textbooks and papers but barely found any concrete answer to which exact mechanism is behind non-intuitive transition from pain to pleasure. Does it have something to do with:

just the effect of dopamine (once the pain is administered, endorphins inhibit GABA and increase dopamine release)?
initially decreased levels of beta-endorphins in the brain, so that pain increases DA release as in (1) and even this small release is enough to feel the pleasure? And, as in people who are prone to self-harm, is it some kind of a "desperate attempt to artificially set the body to survival mode in order to mobilize the last reserves of the endogenous opioid system"?
lower sensitivity (to pain?) in such people?
some other explanations?
If someone have the answer or ran into papers addressing this question, I would be grateful!
Whats the term used to describe a situation where one does not finish the work as he is always looking for a better solution?

I read somewhere about a psychological phenomenon where one is not able to finish a task in time as the entire time is spent in looking for a better or optimum version of a solution - but can't remember the term now.

Can someone please suggest whats it called?
Neurologically, how does a thought terminate?

What prevents my brain from holding the same thought forever, like a frozen computer?

How do neurons terminate a firing pattern and move onto the next?
Why there are tomboy but no Tomgirls?

Tomboys are girls who behave like men but most of them are not transgender and lesbian.

But why there are no tomgirls, boys who behave like girls but are not transgender and homosexual?

What is the the reason?
How Sexual fluidity works?

Can a heterosexual male that doesn't have any attraction towards male become gay without any attraction towards females.

Or will he become bisexual because he was heterosexual before.
Is it possible to get good hallucination while suffering from schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia : A disorder that affects a person's ability to think, feel and behave clearly. The exact cause of schizophrenia isn't known, but a combination of genetics, environment and altered brain chemistry and structure may play a role.

So basically you get hallucination in Schizophrenia. I watched a Video about Schizophrenia and it say something like this .

People who suffer from Schizophrenia have hallucination like :

Fishes are swimming all around them.

Books are melting.

Strange voices are ordering them to to something.

But can anyone have hallucination like :

a woman is loving them(sexually and romantically) .

They have many good friends

The voice in the head are telling them answers in an exam.

So basically can anyone get hallucination that they will enjoy.
What is the scientific term for the tendency to see familiar patterns in things, that are actually something completely different?

What is the scientific term for the tendency to see familiar patterns in things, that are actually something completely different? One of the most common examples of this bias, is the perception of human faces in clouds, cars and all kinds of other objects.

What I am looking for is a lower level misperception, which people are usually aware of on a higher, cognitive level. I.e., people either are, or can easily become aware of the fact that they are not actually seeing a face (or another familiar pattern).
Bias distrusting area of expertise while implicitly trusting other domains?

I've run across descriptions of this bias before, but cannot find it right now... I checked Wikipedia's list of cognitive biases to no avail.

Basically, people working in some domain and having expertise in it, naturally tend to notice the problems in that area, such as incompetence of other people working in their field, bad policies and poor management decision making, etc, resulting in a disproportionate distrust of their own field of expertise. For example, healthcare workers are more likely to be vaccine hesitant because they distrust their own industry more than most due to personal experience with incompetence, mismanagement, politics, and corruption within their field.

However, this distrust does not carry over to other domains. So for example, watching a movie that portrays something you have domain knowledge in, you will quickly notice the inaccuracies and misrepresentation, but portrayals of domains outside your expertise will naturally be believable and perceived as accurate. Similarly, reading news stories about topics that you have expertise in, you will notice inaccuracies and bias immediately, but fail to recognize that the same level of inaccuracy and bias must exist in domains outside your area of expertise, implicitly treating such news stories as accurately reported.

What is this bias called?
What is the difference between recurrent and feedback synapses?

In the paper proposing recurrent convolutional neural networks (RCNN), "Recurrent Convolutional Neural Network for Object Recognition", it is stated that "recurrent synapses typically outnumber feed-forward and top-down (or feedback) synapses".

Up to this point, my understanding was that top-down processing and recurrent connections refer to the same thing... What is the difference between the two?
Are there "place cells" for temporal encoding?

First of all, I have to say I am not a neuroscientist but I like to learn about neuroscience. I understand there are sets of neurons called "place cells" and "grid cells" which encode spatial information in the brain.

My question is simple: Is there a structure in the brain known to encode temporal information analogous to place cells? Is anyone aware of some references or experiments on this subject?
Are we different or same?

I don't know if this is the right site to ask this, if not sorry for that I am new here......

I am wondering if two childs from different parents from different regions are kept in a completely empty room, do they behave same or different and for why(for the genes? and they are just children, like pure children without any experience because if it will not they must behave differently for environmental experiences, right?)?

If my question sounds silly, sorry......
What is the scientific term for the erroneous inversion of cause and effect?

What is the correct scientific term for the - erroneous - inversion of cause and effect?
Name of the psychological effect that make us see correlation that may not exist

After 51 years, the "Z-340" cypher text from "Zodiac" serial killer has been solved: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/11/us/zodiac-killer-cypher-340-code-trnd/index.html

Now that we have the problem and the solution, when I'm watching the cypher text again I'm like "Ho.. look, look, it's so obvious! The sign must mean this and that and the following letter is transposed according to the sign and if you like at this and that there is a clear relationship between the age of the captain and whatever this thing mean!! Ha! It must be!"

Even knowing that it's just wishful thinking, I'm still willing it to be true: "Yeaaah, it's probably, 99.99% sure, just me imagining things.. BUT! That 0.01% doubt, I want it to be true anyway."

There is a name for this effect. I don't think it's the Barnum effect, it may or may not be a "confirmation bias". What is this effect called?
Is fasting an effective method to overcome substance addictions?

I recently watched a testimony of a man who reports the results of a 40-day water/juice fast (no food). The individual claims to have been addicted to drugs for 22 years, including marijuana, cocaine, mushrooms, LSD, ecstasy, prescription pain pills and alcohol. He went cold turkey, abstaining from both food and addictive substances during the 40-day fast. After the fast, he reports complete freedom and no relapses.

This particular case raised my interest in the potential benefits of fasting in the addiction recovery arena. After a quick search I found this site which claims that:

Fasting is by far the most sophisticated willpower workout available. If you get good at fasting, you can learn to control every other aspect of your life. If you get good at fasting, you can overcome any addiction, not matter how deeply imbedded. Medically, fasting has been found to rapidly dissipate the craving for nicotine, alcohol, caffeine and other drugs.

Is it true that any addiction can be overcome with the skills learnt by fasting? Are there studies on the effectiveness of fasting for overcoming substance addictions or any other addiction for that matter?
Is it possible to memorize the sound of a certain pitch?

Those how have an absolute pitch can name the note when they hear it. For those who don't have this ability is it possible to remember a pitch of at least one note?
What is the scientific term for the expectation, that a personal experience positively deviates from what first- or second-hand experience suggests?

What is the scientific term for the tendency of people to believe, that their expected experience positively deviates from what their first- or second-hand experience suggests?

An example for this effect would be an older European Lady dating a young African man and - despite knowing that many such relationships are dominated by asymmetric economical and romantical interests - believes, that her own relationship will be different. Another example are people who are educated and experienced enough to know how cults work, yet fail to identify the cult they themselves are currently involved in.

Generally, I would say it is a form of self-delusion, or hope, if you want to give it a positive spin - but I am looking for a more specific term for this particular type of self-delusion.
Term for the tendency to relate events that occurred in proximity?

What is the correct scientific term for the tendency to wrongfully relate arbitrary observations to a significant event, just because they occurred in temporal or spatial proximity?

Most recently I have observed this error in a discussion about an unsolved killing, where a participant was quite sure that her observation of a black van in a far away town was related to the killing, for the single reason that it occurred around the same time.
IQ-EQ oscillation

I know a guy who was very smart in school and university and had a high IQ. For example, in middle school he used to read high school science and math books like they're nothing but he had low EQ and low emotion control (probably because he had no father figure). Now this guy is in his late 30s and he say he's not as smart as he was, he has trouble understanding some of what he wrote or read 15 years ago, but he now understand emotions better which is clear when you see him interact with other people.

He used to analyze people logically which led him to many awkward moments and many confrontations (especially with girls) when he explained the inconsistencies in their arguments but now he really can read people emotions from their body language, their voice, their words.... which led him to wonder if some of his IQ became EQ. Suppose that he decides to live far from people and study his favorite subjects again, will his EQ decrease and become IQ?
What's the behaviour of downplaying the importance of something you wanted but didn't get called?

I've seen this phenomenon in various pieces of media, but recently observed it in real life and I'm wondering what it's called.

Basically, when you want something but don't get it, you downplay the importance of that thing.

I've mostly seen it depicted as "moody teens" using responses like "I didn't want to go to that party anyway", or "you can keep your stupid X, I didn't want it anyway".
Identify kind of descriptive role playing game for self-discovery

There's a comic book called "Knights of the Dinner Table" about a bunch of rpg players.

In one issue, the only girl at the table GM's some kind of self-discovery game she learnt in her psychology class. She describes some situations and asks for details from the players, giving an example herself.

At one point, for example, she says:

Ok, so you continue your journey down your own personal path. Soon you come to a large bear! What do you do? My bear turns out to be very tame and I'm able to hand feed it and befriend it! He decides to accompany me on my journey.

At the end, she explains what each thing symbolizes:

The bear represents adversity and how you deal with it

Supposedly this is (loosely) based on a real exercise for self discovery. I would like to know more about the real exercise in which this is based, but I don't know how to start.

Any idea how this exercise is called, or how can I find more information about something similar?

Thanks.
Revenge attitude: is it innate or acquired in human

I am trying to understand what is the root cause for revenge? I understand anger is caused by the gap between expectation/anticipation and the reality. But as to revenge, I am not satisfied just with identity related or social order maintenance or reciprocity. While resources pointing to the direction of getting started, any valuable input, views, opinions and research outcomes would be very much helpful.
What keywords to learn more about sense pleasing?

The article What Makes Something Aesthetically Pleasing? | Simple Minded lists some way to pleasing your senses:

Vision: balance, emphasis, rhythm, proportion, pattern, unity and contrast. Along with the visual elements: color, line, shape, value, texture
Hearing: loudness, pitch, beat, repetition, melody, pattern, noise
Touch: texture, shape, weight, softness, temperature, vibration, sharpness
Smell: sweet, fruity, fragrant, pungent, chemical, woody, minty
Taste: umami, sweetness, sourness, bitterness, texture, pungency
If I want to learn more about sense pleasing, where should I start? Which subfields within psychology or neuroscience research about this? The Wikipedia page of Sensation doesn't contain the keyword pleasing. Searching on Google Scholar with the keyword sense pleasing doesn't yield anything. Two other fields relevant to this are aesthetics and design, but they are just applications of this concept.
Why use a quasi experimental design when you can do an experiment?

I read about quasi-experimental design and the variations it has such as pre-test post-test non-equivalent groups, and also experimental designs. Having compared these two, I ascertained that the difference between this variation of quasi-experimental design(pre-test post-test non-equivalent groups) and experimental design is randomization. However, what I couldn't understand was:

Why should quasi-experimental design even exist when we can do randomization easily and the randomization has more benefits than matching the participants?

Honestly, I search for the answer but I couldn't find any, and obviously that is why I'm asking a question, yet if you find any alike question I would be happy if you refer me to it. I genuinely appreciate it if you refer me to at least one resource as well. The reference book for the discrimination between these two designs: Introduction to Research Methods and Data Analysis in Psychology, Third Edition by Darren Langdridge and Gareth Hagger-Johnson
Doubt on definition of emotion

I am currently reading Psychology and Life by Richard J. Gerig, where emotions are defined as

A complex pattern of changes, including physiological arousal, feelings, cognitive processes, and behavioral reactions, made in response to a situation perceived to be personally significant.

I am not able to understand why anything other than feelings should be part of emotion. Isn't physiologica arousal, behavioral reactions and cognitive processes side effects of emotions rather than being part of emotion itself? For e.g. when you feel angry your heart rate increases. Why including factors (other than feeling) in definition make sense? I think this is also related to unlearning what has been already wrongly learnt where I am treating emotion just as feeling but nothing more.
Why does IQ have a truncated normal distribution?

I know that the IQ statistic is designed to give it a mean of 100 and that you'll certainly never find someone with an IQ below 1 or above 300, but that tells us very little about the variance or general shape of the distribution. So why is it that every graph of IQ scores that I've seen appears to be a truncated normal distribution? Is it some property of the test design, some property of the test subjects, or some deep theorem in statistics that I've overlooked?
I am looking for the name of a phenomenon where people blindly follow others when they sense a threat

So I am composing a post and I am looking for a name of the behaviour among people that they start running when they see two or more people running in opposite direction sensing a potential threat or when two or more people are looking upwards, others also start looking upwards. Such phenomena is recorded in various funny videos compilations and I would like to know if there is any name of such phenomena or any description of such phenomena that I can refer to in the post?
How can humans tell when something diverges from the norm

With this I mean the notion of humans being able to, for example, look at a painting and tell that something doesn't belong in there. For example sun glasses on the Mona Lisa, without prior knowledge of the painting. I just find it easier to spot or add things to something that are wrong than to add something that fits in perfectly.

I found some pointers to Gestalt Theory but I couldn't find anything there yet. I'll keep looking but maybe someone here knows what I'm trying to convey. Thanks.
What measures are available for calculating big 5 congruence with a collection of profiles?

Say there is a group of OCEAN profiles. How do I calculate how well another profile fits into this group of profiles?

Is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congruence_coefficient the way to go or are there alternatives?
Thinking about What Others Think of You

When a mind develops, it goes through numerous stages of awareness, such as (not necessarily in order)

Awareness of others
Awareness of self
Awareness of other's thoughts (this may not be a discrete stage)
What do you call the awareness of other's awareness of you (and the logical deduction of what they believe you're thinking)?

I believe this should be the stage before meta-gaming is possible.