Unanswered Questions
15
votes
0answers
161 views
How do emotions influence the language structures we use?
What are the verbal signs of subjectivity?
I am doing research about the linguistic content of media (debates, talk-show, sport comments). It occurs that once the participant gets nervous or excited, ...
13
votes
0answers
321 views
What neural structures motivate humans to decide to “throw it all away”?
In the original formulation of this question, I was trying to understand what motivates "cut and run" behavior in humans. I was defining this anecdotally to include people that have severed ties with ...
11
votes
0answers
118 views
Development of social cognition as an alternative to the obstetrical dilemma
Human infants are strange in that they are born more helpless than the infants of other great apes. They are born with about 25-30% of their brain developed, compared to the 40-50% of other great ...
9
votes
0answers
82 views
How to measure dominance and submissiveness?
Introduction
Interpersonal dimensions of personality (Sullivan, 1953) have been described in a circular model, the interpersonal circumplex, since Leary (1957). The two dimensions that define this ...
9
votes
0answers
50 views
How similar are human brains within the same haplogroup?
I've grown up and went through school with a "politically correct" view on people that we are all "the same". The TED talk that I've listed below hints that this view might've arisen in the post-WW2 ...
9
votes
0answers
101 views
Does the effect of naturalistic exposure on second language acquisition vary with age?
A while back, I watched the movie The Terminal and the main character played by Tom Hanks learns to speak fluent English while he is stranded in the airport for more than a year. Which seems somewhat ...
9
votes
0answers
164 views
Longitudinal mobile mood tracking app with random reminders
The goal is to take simple measurements of mood using Likert scale over an extended period of time (e.g. two months).
I know there is a large number of mobile apps for tracking mood on every ...
9
votes
0answers
73 views
Human behaviour in one-shot perfect information games
Background
A one-shot game is one where two participants have some set of actions $\{1, ... , n\}$, they make their decision on which option to take (without knowing the decision of their partner, or ...
9
votes
0answers
90 views
Do cultures differ in the perception of emotions from body expression?
In their classic study, Ekman and Friesen (1971) identified seven facial expressions recognised by people universally across all cultures as depicting certain emotions: happiness, sadness, surprise, ...
9
votes
0answers
56 views
Does self-directed speech help or hurt a blind subject's auditory recognition?
Recently, it was found that self-directed speech was helpful to sighted subjects engaging in a visual search task:
Participants searched for common objects, while being sometimes [sic] asked to ...
9
votes
0answers
141 views
Evolutionary game theory in the cognitive sciences
Game theory models something very relevant to psychologists (in particular social psychologists): conflict and cooperation between decision-makers. Unfortunately, classical game theory demands that ...
9
votes
0answers
187 views
Fitting a psychometric function when data does not lend itself to a sigmoidal fit [pypsignifit]
I'm fitting a psychometric function to a range of data. The majority of this data lends itself to a sigmoidal fit (i.e. participants can do the task), but some individuals are absolutely unable to do ...
9
votes
0answers
112 views
What is the effect of Social Proof on Conversion Rate?
I'm wondering to what extent Social Proof helps the Conversion Rate of websites and marketing.
Specifically I'm wondering what effect Social Proof would have on Conversion Rate for a sample task in ...
8
votes
0answers
70 views
What is the bias/thought process that results in distrust of “formal” knowledge in favor of “folk” knowledge?
An interesting effect I've noticed is that certain groups of people seem to accept "folk knowledge" and value it over significantly better founded "formal" or scientific knowledge. In particular this ...
8
votes
0answers
31 views
What is the influence of “effort put into pursuing wealth” on happiness?
As presented in the TED talk by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (3:30) repeated research has been unable to show a correlation between happiness and level of material wealth (above a certain minimum ...
