Psychology is the science of mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand behavior and mental processes by researching and establishing both general principles and specific cases.
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162 views
Does the Gruen Transfer exist?
The Gruen Transfer describes an effect that shopping malls are said to have on shoppers.
In a 1992 essay, The World in a Shopping Mall, Dr. Margaret Crawford explains, in a discussion on the ...
2
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0answers
103 views
Did Lewandowsky use dodgy data in his paper showing correlation between free market and anti-science views?
In 2012 Australian psychologist Stephen Lewandowsky (and others) published a paper claiming to show that there was a significant correlation between beliefs in free market economics and the rejection ...
0
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0answers
31 views
Alcohol good or bad? [duplicate]
I see moderate alcohol shows (supposed) benefits for health and long life. I am 42 and experienced a mid life crisis 4 months ago (initially a nervous breakdown). I am slowly getting better but stil ...
13
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0answers
800 views
Is rape a crime about violence and power, or a crime of passion?
Adam Carolla, from the popular radio show Loveline, and in the Guiness Records for the most downloaded podcast of all time made the following claim (1 min mark):
rape is not a sexual crime, you ...
3
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0answers
238 views
Span of Control: 5-7 direct subordinates of one manager
I keep hearing about "ideal" number of direct subordinates, which is 5 to 7.
It's also called "Span of control"
Span of control, also known as span of management, is a human resources management ...
2
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2answers
147 views
Is the eye-movement aspect of EMDR therapy more effective than other available therapies for treating trauma survivors?
A recent BBC article discussed the use of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) therapy for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It makes the claim, "Some are still sceptical ...
7
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0answers
273 views
Is there any correlation between sleeping position and personality?
I've read in various news sites (1, 2, 3) that sleeping position correlates with personality. Most go as far as describing what personality traits are linked to each different position but no mentions ...
16
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1answer
556 views
Are over 90% of school shooters on anti-psychotics?
The video The Truthseeker: Schools, Guns & Drugs claims that over 90% of "school shooters" were on presciption drugs (voice-over) or anti-psychotics (subtitles).
It seems to me that it would be ...
5
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0answers
125 views
Do light boxes help Seasonal Affective Disorder?
Light boxes are sold as a treatment for seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and seasonal mood swings. The claims listed are:
Helps to ease seasonal mood swings and winter depression, and help ...
0
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0answers
154 views
At which age children can be meaningfully labeled as having a religion? [closed]
Richard Dawkins: There no such thing as a Muslim child, only a child of Muslim parents.
In different ages children can learn different concepts. It's a popular belief that children before the age ...
-1
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1answer
477 views
Is a religious upbringing psychologically damaging to a child? [closed]
On his web-site in 2006, noted skeptic and atheist Professor Richard Dawkins wrote:
Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting ...
11
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1answer
483 views
Does Chess ELO correlate with IQ
Does chess ELO rating of players (who have trained/played approximately the same amount of time) correlate with IQ?
The claim is 'IQ and chess ELO ratings don't correlate', a view widespread in ...
11
votes
1answer
401 views
Do higher mathematical abilities inversely correlate with good communication skills?
There is a persistent stereotype that geeks (let's formally define that as people a couple of standard deviations better than average in math, computers or other related abilities) as a whole have ...
6
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1answer
434 views
2
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0answers
181 views
Is too much skepticism a bad thing? [closed]
I was pondering while bathing today, is to much skepticism a bad thing? I mean fair enough if you're feeling doubtful about something but surely there is a point where it's just a little too much.
0
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0answers
87 views
Does a lack of smell and taste result in a lack of appetite? [closed]
In one of the other questions (is 80% of a human's sense of taste in their nose?) it is stated that smell & taste are most likely to be strongly connected. I was thinking about this and came up ...
32
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2answers
2k views
Does working over 40 hours a week makes you less productive?
A few articles claim that working more than 40 hours per week makes you less productive. Longer workweeks eventually make you less productive than 40-hour work weeks.
From ...
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1answer
197 views
Can those limited to the left side of their brains only describe the left half of one's face?
In this video (around 9:45 into it), the narrator says one effect of being limited to the left hemisphere of the brain was that, without noticing it, one will lose the ability to describe the right ...
10
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1answer
445 views
Money doesn't correlate with happiness after a certain level
I read various claims, but this HowStuffWorks article seems the most representative (bolding is all mine):
The one place that money and happiness are significantly linked is
when a person is ...
7
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0answers
278 views
Do peoples' names affect their choice of career?
The classic purported around the interwebs is of Dennis the Dentist or Lawrence the Lawyer - the idea that a person is likely to choose a career or place to live because it reminds them of their name. ...
5
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0answers
162 views
Do frank (but not gratuitous) discussions or depictions of sexuality traumatize children?
I've heard many parents, on several occasions, make statements to the effect that they believe it to be harmful to discuss sexuality openly and directly with young children (I'm talking about kids ...
1
vote
1answer
236 views
Does the combination of red wine and cheese cause bad dreams?
I have only anecdotal evidence to support the aforementioned claim: heard it from several people in my youth and believe to have experienced it myself, but that might be placebo. Some quick googling ...
0
votes
0answers
141 views
How scientific are the self-help books? [closed]
I have been reading a lot of motivational books like Power of your subconscious mind, Think and Grow Rich , 7 habits of highly effective people and few others. I want to know how scientific are ...
0
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0answers
57 views
Is there any devices or software to prevent Sleepwalking (Somnambulism)? [closed]
I have problem with sleep walking.I am 23 year old.I heard about that some software or devices can track the sleep cycles.Is there any devices or software to prevent from sleep walking?
9
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1answer
666 views
Can a trained human eye catch microexpressions?
Microexpressions were validated in this question: Do involuntary "microexpressions" betray liars?
But can a human eye (as opposed to a frame by frame analysis of a high-speed video) detect ...
7
votes
0answers
420 views
Does suggestive selling work in small retail?
Suggestive selling (or "on-selling" or "up-selling") is a technique employed by a sales clerk with the goal of increasing the total sale amount (basket size). The classic example is the McDonalds' ...
15
votes
1answer
666 views
Does being a strong free market supporter correlate with rejection of scientific claims?
The following research claims that there is a link between one being a strong free market supporter and being more likely to reject scientific claims:
Paralleling previous work, we find that ...
5
votes
0answers
331 views
Baby flashcards: good or bad?
Baby flashcards have grown in popularity. They are advertised with seemingly amazing effects, like 1½ year old reading and counting.
On the other hand academics seem to either say that they don't ...
5
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0answers
1k views
Tying a finger to help memory recall
I was playing Zynga's Draw Something when I saw an interesting icon:
A quick search of "tying fingers" produces results such as:
Big Site of Amazing Facts
This is a carry-over from olden ...
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vote
0answers
46 views
Which publishers provide reference for scientific topics and latest research in a handbook format? [closed]
I'm curious and looking for books specially handbooks which cover all the breadth of latest research provided for a specific scientific topics.
I've already found one publisher which is Cambridge ...
19
votes
1answer
940 views
Do stress balls reduce stress?
Do stress balls (those things you squeeze that claim to reduce stress) show any efficacy?
For example: HealthGuidance
The simple act of squeezing something in your hand can help you ease a few of ...
8
votes
0answers
148 views
Are prices ending with 99 cents more likely to result in purchase decisions? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
The origin of “99 cents”
"Psychological pricing" refers to the theory that certain prices are more likely to lead to a sale than others. In the United ...
11
votes
2answers
1k views
Does a suspect's psychological state after arrest correlate to guilt or innocence? e.g. do only the guilty sleep in jail?
A common cop procedural trope suggests only the guilty sleep in jail. It shows up in Law and Order: SVU (S6E04), award winning movies, and even articles about poker tells. The guilty, or so the ...
14
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0answers
604 views
Do performance incentives work for knowledge workers?
In this animated video of his talk, Dan Pink claims performance incentives do not work, and can actually lead to worse performance.
In summary, he quotes two studies (which he unfortunately does not ...
14
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2answers
3k views
Is there any correlation between the ear to which you hold the phone and the person on the other end?
On a Big Bang Theory episode (sec 56) Leonard is talking over the phone and everyone wonders who's the person on the other side, afterward Sheldon claims:
This should be fairly easy to deduce. ...
18
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4answers
1k views
Does willpower depend on the amount of glucose in the body?
How strong is the evidence for the argument made in Willpower by Baumeister and Tierney?
Basically willpower (or better: "self-control") is supposed to be proportional to the amount of glucose in ...
18
votes
2answers
2k views
Do eye movements reveal “how” a person is thinking?
According to NLP adherents:
The NLP Eye movements indicate how a person is thinking - whether they are imagining a future or past event, internally re-hearing a sound or making up a sound, talking ...
0
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0answers
87 views
Fritz Perls - Eye Witness to Therapy film [closed]
I am reading Fritz Perls' book called "Eye Witness to Therapy" which contains film transcipts that Perls thought would be useful to learn Gestalt therapy.
For me it is a very deep and interesting ...
7
votes
1answer
642 views
Are media's portrayals of physical perfection a contributing cause of eating disorders?
Observations:
Advertisers heavily market weight-reduction programs and present
anorexic young models as the paradigm of sexual desirability
Clothes are designed and displayed for thin bodies in ...
10
votes
1answer
569 views
Is preferred personal space affected by population density?
Many years ago, I learnt of the concept of "personal space" - the idea that people carry a small territory around them that they do not like strangers to invade.
In particular, the size of one's ...
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0answers
2k views
Does “Where the Wild Things Are” frighten children to a degree that author Maurice Sendak failed to comprehend? [closed]
Until the day he died, Maurice Sendak railed, somewhat playfully, against child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim for the psychologist's criticism of "Where the Wild Things Are":
"What's wrong with ...
3
votes
1answer
444 views
Is the McGurk effect real?
I watched this video on YouTube about the McGurk effect. Then I saw the following comment on Google+ :
Singularity Utopia Feb 25, 2012 (edited)
I am often sceptical regarding
so-called ...
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1answer
135 views
What does “more likely to be disbelievers” mean in this article? [closed]
With reference to this article: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-new-brain/201204/religion-and-reason
My question is, when the experimental group turned out to be composed of more disbelievers ...
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votes
2answers
868 views
Is the claim of liberalism being a psychological disorder accurate?
Michael Savage thinks so. A psychiatrist, Dr. Lyle Rossiter wrote a book about it back in 2006, and thinks so as well.
Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by both Barack Obama and ...
9
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1answer
1k views
Does Denver International Airport display murals of conquering stormtroopers and dead children?
Some people experience unease going through the airport, and it seems best to provide something soothing and uncontroversial to look at while walking to the aircraft .... like advertising.
Certainly ...
3
votes
0answers
379 views
Explanation for regularly hearing music of no apparent source?
My grandfather considers himself a skeptic. His wife (my grandmother) recently passed away, and ever since, he swears that he can hear distant ethereal music late at night, every night, and only in ...
15
votes
2answers
360 views
Is the placebo effect dependent on the amount of belief in it?
For example, are people with habitually skeptical attitudes less likely to benefit from the placebo effect? Has this been studied? (For instance, one might seek a correlation based on professions ...
18
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2answers
2k views
Can humans influence the outcome of random event generators with their mind?
Roger D. Nelson, PhD (Experimental Psychology), claims to have proven using scientific methods that humans can influence the outcome of random number/event generators (RNG or REG) with their mind. The ...
11
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1answer
771 views
Has lucid dreaming been scientifically observed?
I found this anecdote in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman. In the passage below, Feynman describes his attempts to analyze his dreams
I also noticed that as you go to sleep ...
2
votes
1answer
283 views
Is there a logical explanation for coulrophobia (fear of clowns)? [closed]
I know a couple people who do, and I've read that it's something more commonly found on small children, however not unheard of to find an Adult with an actual fear of clowns.
